Poetry of Judith Wright
The material in this booklet suggests some ways that views and values
expressed in Judith Wright’s poetry might be discussed.
Janet McCurry
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THE LIT-CRIT PROCESS
WITH CLOSE ANALYSIS AT ITS HEART
Close
analysis
Overall
interpretation,
views and values
Key ideas,
Key concerns
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Judith Wright poetry: some vocabulary and concepts
Feeling
Tentativeness
Emotion
Intuition
Organism
Provisional ness
Impression
Approximation
Uncertainty/ possibility
Values/ preferences
Subjectivity
Humanity/community/culture
Randomness
Spontaneity/ chance/ impulsivity /serendipity
Continuity/ interdependence
Wholeheartedness
Warmth/passion
Fertility/fecundity/ mess
Reproduction
Inclusion/ acceptance
Sensitivity/ vulnerability
Spirituality/ mystery
Thinking
Definitiveness
Reason
Deduction
Mechanism
Algorithm
Measurement/ calibration
Precision
Certainty/ circumscription
Standards/ absolutes
Objectivity
Science/technology/mathematics
Control/ reliablility/ specification
Predictability
Separateness/ individuality
Calculation
Coldness/ reservation
Sterility/ scarcity/ order
Replication
Exclusion/intolerance
Imperviousness/stoicism
Empiricism/ evidence
Modeling
1.
“Judith Wright’s poetry speaks of diffident, fugitive ideas that do not often have a voice. “
Discuss.
Judith Wright’s poetry speaks of diffident, fugitive ideas that do not often have a voice. This is true
for poems like South Of My Days, where the beauty and fragility of the Australian landscape is
captured in the first paragraph….but which has been overwhelmed by the European plants which
aggressively…
Old Dan’s stories too, are aggressive and self-promoting. They drown out other stories that might
be discovered if one could listen to the ….or articulate the almost mystical connection between the
human inhabitants of a place and the terrain… South of My Days (1945?) prefigures any notions of
public reconciliation with the indigenous people of Australia, but it is clearly expressing an
impatience with the self-promoting, self-satisfied, masculinist Eurocentric values and identity that
dominate stories of our heritage. The poem suggests that we should look more inwardly, with more
delicacy and tentativeness for an understanding of the purpose of human existence and our
relationship with the rest of humanity and the physical world.
Continue a discussion of the poem in the terms outlined above.
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The Company of Lovers, written after the Second World War, has this same interest in that which
is subjugated by aggressive, destructive forces. The opening lines have a delicacy and gentleness,
an expression of the desolation that is felt after the momentary connection is made, “We meet and
part now…”
(Now, I’m not going to try to do it, but I think that you could make an argument about all of the
poems in the set using this framework. Poems like The Dark Ones fit this frame very well. A poem
like Double Image is an exploration of those destructive subjugating impulses that are part of the
human condition. Eve, sitting with her daughters, is trying to suggest that Adam can’t help it and
that we women need to assert other ways of understanding human existence, or the meaning of life
…otherwise we are headed for annihilation.)
Woman to Man and Woman to Child make a powerful claim for this female understanding. Age to
Youth ? Smalltown Dance? Some Words?- in what ways would all its different sections fit into
this framework? Fire Sermon? Tight Ropes?
Woman (in Woman to Man) is engrossed by the fundamental, generative process that involves her
intimately but which is beyond her understanding. Her experience connects her directly to the
spring of life (well-spring?) and the poem is a celebration of the wonder of that. Her passion and
focus is generous and selfless. She, in the loving relationship that she has with Man, is the medium
for this infinite joyous creativity, that is, at the same time, terrifying in its profundity. In Eve to her
daughters, Adam's passion- his genius- is self-absorbed and futile- a process that is ultimately
meaningless and sterile, rapacious but self-defeating, disconnected from the well-spring.
Little and infinitely, intensely creative and profound: big, and collapsing into its own emptiness.
Notes on Wright’s Double Image
“Image” suggests representation rather than reality, as in a photograph or sketch, or a reflectionsomething mirrored?
This poem is about the speaker’s recognition of the darkest aspects of her human nature, feelings
and impulses that she has in common with her ancestors and presumably all humanity. It’s a
visceral poem that recounts the speaker’s vicarious participation in the most brutal, almost bestial,
fight to the death with another, when she was was within her ‘kinsman’s flesh …and skull’ and
experienced his wounds as if they were her own. In a nightmarish other reality she performs with
her kinsman the bloodthirsty, merciless hacking and ripping of the enemy, when they ‘struck and
tore again/ The jumping flesh…and drank the blood…’ This is bestial, desperate, all-consuming
and the other’s death is terrifying as she sees the ‘curve of horror’ and comprehends the ‘speech
within the speechless eye’.
The poem begins enigmatically with simply stated paradoxes… ‘the long- dead living forest…as
white as bone as dark as hair’. The collection of these ghostly images, including the notion that
this monochromatic forest ‘rose’ sets an atmosphere of unreality, of spectral shapes becoming
apparent, as if appearing on a blank screen, of some sort of alternative- or virtual- ancient time and
space taking form. Paradoxical statements continue as the speaker reveals that she witnessed a fight
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‘for [her] life; and [she] was there’. She- our contemporary- is at once witnessing a scene from
long ago, and present at that scene where she is some sort of prize, or her potential to come into
existence is some sort of prize. It’s very enigmatic. The atmosphere is charged with high emotionthe fight is ‘in rage’ and it’s a fight to the death which is paradoxically a fight for her life. It is
somehow muted and distant…refracted…this peculiar distancing is achieved through the double
past that is presented…she is giving an account of a past experience in which she experienced the
past.
“Protagonists” - who are they? The word suggests leading men, heroes – antagonistic protagonists
representing different sides in some sort of struggle?? They are ‘old protagonists’ and this bitter
struggle is of long-standing. ??I don’t think this is going to be very productive…
Generalities, interpretations
ETHD
It’s a conundrum.
It’s a reductio ad absurdum.
It’s a complaint.
It’s wry and resigned.
WTM
It’s a mystery.
It begins more profound the deeper you go into the mystery. This has to do with the texture of the
imagery and the adamant confidence of the speaker.
It’s an avowal.
It’s celebratory and, finally, overawed by its insights into
Comparisons, resonances, links
Wright’s poetry explores the ways that [the softer values of ] imagination and feeling are devalued
in favor of [the harder values of] so-called rationalism.
Discuss.
Woman to Man and Eve to her daughters
“The set of Judith Wright poems explores ideas which suggest that the particular
experience of women, or female experience, has been undervalued; just as
women’s opportunities for joy and fulfilment have been limited by
the assumptions and values of society.”
Using this statement as a framework, plot out how you would link
ALL of the poems in the set to it, or parts of it…
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Many of Wright’s poems explore the ways that imagination and feeling are now devalued
in favor of the harder values of so-called rationalism. Discuss, with specific reference to the
following poems:
Judith Wright’s poetry seems to challenge contemporary western values that aggrandize ideas like
consumerism, rationalism, economic progress, and individual self-realisation. Instead, the poems
explore ways in which human experience is collective and interconnected, across genders,
generations and cultures, inextricably linked and cumulative. Many poems suggest that profound
and mysterious connections amongst people, and between people and the physical world have been
neglected or abused.
Student writing
Double image
Eternity juxtaposed against finality. Perpetual generational cycle. The idea of existing within and outside of
ancestors and descendants.
It is difficult to put a label on the poem Double Image and to say, the poem is about this. It is contradictory
and paradoxical, the speaker existing in the present, the past; as a separate entity and within another being.
The “long-dead living forest” seems to exist physically, and also as a metaphysical symbol in the heart of the
speaker. The protagonists are equally as ambiguous. The balanced pairs of paradoxes (also present in
Woman to Man), such as “when one must die, not knowing death,/ and one knows death who cannot die.”
create ambiguity and enigma.
This poem subtly handles the innate brutality of human nature, and the ingrained desire to survive. It spans
what could be any amount of time, at any point in time, not speaking directly of any particular era or event in
history. It has a cyclical nature of things existing within things, represented in the paradox “[they] fought for
my life; and I was there.”
The dramatic battle to the death, and for the life of the speaker is a contradiction in itself.
Judith Wright- Views and Values
Many of Wright’s poems explore the ways that imagination and feeling are now devalued in favour
of the harder values of so-called rationalism. Discuss, with specific reference to the poems.
Eve to Her Daughters displays that intense determination to find scientific explanation for all in the
world as Adam strives to ‘unravel everything.
’
That sense that he is unpicking things seems unnecessary and even selfish driven by the want for
recognition over inventing them. Unclear.His pursuit in finding reason extends further as he begins
to create things to make a ‘new Eden’ supposedly for the greater good- ‘for Abel and Cain
and the rest of the family’. Yet the long list is both gratuitous and drawn out mirroring how
unnecessary these inventions are. Stick to the language…show me how it works…don’t just
claim…This loss of imagination and sensitivityexcellent, but where is it? The flotsam of modern
life??? is shown as the rational thought leads to a destruction of all that is organic and natural in
favour of a more mechanical world filled with ‘mechanical harvesters and combustion engines.’
Swapping richness for sterility and order also marks how instead of reconstructing Eden and the
paradise they are moving further away from it. Prove it!
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Also within Smalltown Dance the experience of imagination and of dreaming of a better future are
reined in as rationalism prevails. The opportunities for joy or fulfilment have been limited by the
assumption and values of society. Excellent. Develop this discussion.
The ‘ancient dance’ proves to be both long-standing and well-known. ?? Like something which can
be recited it is as much a chore as the image of folding sheets is. ??? The concise instructions of
‘two forward steps’ show how restrictive the dance and the values projected are.
Suggest…develop…Where one foot wrong could disrupt or break the machine which works like
clockwork. The theme we avoid the word theme…of rationalism continues as they find the ‘squareroot of a sheet,’ where the behaviour is almost mathematical and measured. So what are the
implications of this. Your commentary is very descriptive and needs to grow more out of a close
analysis of the poem itself.
The women are acutely aware of the constraints and limits which stop them for reaching fulfilment
and accomplishment. There is an air of sadness and resignation as the speaker details the
restrictions which progressively become more tangible and threatening. From the ‘limit of
opportunity’ it moves to a physical barrier ‘the fence’ and then further to ‘how little chance there is
of getting’ which conjures that sense of claustrophobia and suffocation. The repetition of the
boundaries they feel also sounds like a recitation as if it has been drummed into them so they can
never forget where they stand. Yes good…but it could be more detailed and more developed.
These values of order, certainty and rationalism contrast with the joyful and enchanting childhood
experience which interrupts Smalltown Dance. Wedged between two stanzas which emphasise a
controlled environment the interlude of warmth and freedom is refreshing.
It shows how childhood is the epitome of imagination and free-wheeling emotions where
rationalism and common sense is almost non-existent. Prove it…don’t spend so long claiming
things in mid air.
The possibilities seem endless only being ‘roofed’ by the sky and surrounded by unobstructed
waiting green’ gives that sense that the sky and your own imagination is the limit. Good. These
organic and natural images also highlight the distinction between the lushness and fertility of
imagining anything against the limits placed by order and sterility. Where?? The cupboard?
It also shows a heightened awareness and experience of emotions and surroundings. A welcome
onslaught on the senses where everything when you are small is felt more intensely, the colours of
the blue sky and ‘unobstructed green’ and the aroma of ‘high-scented walls.’ The touch of the
sheets which ‘wrapped and comforted’ really amplifies how imagination and innocence transforms
it into a sign of welcome warmth, compared with the third stanza where it may be seen as
restriction. I agree with you but I don’t find the way you’re describing it very convincing. You’re
gushing a bit. Get a bit closer to the language of the text…
Woman to man
Woman to man describes this makes it sound pretty flat the sacred creation of a new life, and the
complexities that the new life brings to the world. Is this right? Is it the best way of saying it? The
union between man and woman is depicted through descriptions of the masculine ‘strength that your
arm knows’ and the feminine ‘arc of flesh that is my breast’. The polarities of male and female merge to
create a new life, and ‘the precise crystals of our eyes’ unites them as they gaze into each other’s eyes.
Their eyes are not fused…I don’t think you’re getting close enough to the language.The ‘wild tree that
grows’ and the ‘intricate and folded rose’ highlight the infinite complexity of human anatomy, and
reinforce the image of planting a seed within the woman. This is a bit like giving a ‘translation’. Do
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these images reinforce the masculine/ feminine polarities that you have mentioned? How are these
ideas expressed? Based on this description, what is the speaker’s attitude to sex?
The ‘selfless, shapeless seed’ of the child is described as ‘our hunter and our chase’, ‘the maker
and the made’, ‘the question and the reply’. The series of paradoxes suggests that the child is allencompassing, embodying all the paradoxes, being both the hunter, seeking life, and the chase, the
object of woman and man’s natural, innate instinct to procreate. The child is both ‘the maker’, who
makes the couple’s union, brings them together, and ‘the made’, the creation, the result of the chase.
Yes. But again, I would like you to try to do more with the images, the implications of the words
themselves and the tone of the speaker’s voice. For instance, I think you miss whatever is there in the
first pair that you list…
The child is depicted as a ‘selfless, shapeless seed’, unformed and incomplete. Good but it
would have been better if you hadn’t stolen the thunder of the quote by mentioning it before and then
repeating it.The woman says that ‘this is no child with a child’s face’; it is not yet fully formed. But it
has a face? The face of a child? Or it has no face? Yet inherent in this incompleteness is a sense of
intimacy between the couple, that ‘this has no name to name it by: yet you and I have known it well.’
The child is a secret they share, ‘silent and swift and deep from sight’, their own precious creation. But
in some ways it’s much more her secret and her experience isn’t it? What is she articulating to the
child’s father? Why? The child, while being ‘the third who lay in our embrace’, an appendage better
word? of the man and woman, also has a trace of autonomy- it ‘foresees the unimagined light’, it has
innate instincts and is ‘butting at the dark’, knowing intuitively how to come into the world. Good.
Impatient? Brutal? Oblivious to the woman’s body? It ‘builds for its resurrection day’- preparing for
the day it will come to life, the day it will become a child with a child’s face. No- tell me how this is
working- don’t use the language of the poem to account for the language of the poem…or at least not
without discussing the language of each instance and the significance of the connection.
Whilst the woman has untied united…typo..freudian anagram with the man to create a new life,
and assumes responsibility for her child, she exudes an air of vulnerability when she says ‘Oh hold me,
for I am afraid.’ Perhaps she is afraid of the responsibility of ‘the selfless, shapeless seed [she] hold[s]’,
the total dependence the child has upon her and the burden of carrying the child, of holding its life in
her hands. She may be afraid of the beginning of the new life, and what it will mean for her as the
mother. In any case, she appeals to the man, good wanting to feel ‘the strength that your arm knows’,
to share the fear, and perhaps also the joy, of their creation. Yes…but don’t let your prose get too
purple…
Well done. Well worth the effort…and keep on coming back to it… 8/10
The Dark Ones/ Eve to Her Daughters/ South of My Days
On the surface The Dark Ones describes the oppression and racial discrimination of the Aborigines.
Shunned by the dominant European race, like intruders in their own home country- does the word
‘intruders’ exactly match the way that they are ‘shunned’,
When they are described as spirits it evokes a sense of the fear and alarm within the white people
focus precisely on the language of the poem and identify the point of view: who is speaking? as
though their foreignness is something wickedly supernatural- something evil.
In Eve To Her Daughters, Eve says Adam believes “what cannot be demonstrated, doesn ’t exist”
suggesting that he has lost his faith in “God and the Other”, believing instead in rationality and
scientific proof. Therefore this too could be a reason for the “white folk” disliking the “dark ones”
as it is a way of avoiding guilt and shame. They are transformed into spirits by whom? because in
this way they are not “real people”, instead vacuous and empty, and therefore don’t require the
same treatment as other human beings. Where is this in the language? Show me how this works…
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This notion of rationality and scientific proof devouring subsuming?humanity’s sensitivity to true emotion and
feeling is embodied in Adam’s “new Eden”- artificial, ?? mechanical? and industrial- a consumerist
world. Good. Like the European people attempting to control the Aboriginal “spirits”, it is as
though Adam is afraid of losing control of something so mysterious and unknown, the Earth???I’m
not sure what this means?
The long list of Adam’s “creations” are over empowering and domineering as though swallowing up
overwhelming? the land itself. In the same way in South of My Days the anomalous plants seem
to
suffocate and smother the stark beauty of the Australian landscape. Good. The land is sensitive and
fragile beneath the elaborateness and irregular lusciousness lushness? of the foreign plants, like
intruders in this world
It as though through her poetry Wright is attempting to illustrate why not just say that she does it…give her
credit… the disillusionment??? of foreign intruders within Australia- as they completely miss the point
of it good.
Although the white people- again, this would be more effective if you had identified the point of view or the
identity of the voicein The Dark Ones view the Aborigines as threatening, there is also a sense of awe and
wonder in their deep connection to “the night” and land. The description of them as spirits evokes a
limitlessness about them, as though their presence is everlasting, it belongs within this setting.
terrificIn contrast, the white people lack all substance for they are mere “faces of pale stone”. Like
the cold artificiality of Adam’s creations, there is no vitality excellent or ambiguity, just a simple
straightforwardness this sounds like a compliment!, bland and unfeeling- good
This sense of the perpetual connection that the Aboriginal people have with the land is also embodied in the
speaker’s voice of South of My Days. There is constancy in the almost epic this is a very European
masculinist notion…can you find other ways of describing this?? Mythic? descriptions of the “high
lean country”. The stories the speaker knows seem to be eternally engraved in the land and will
continue to exist there while she goes “walking in her sleep”. Excellent There is the sense that she
speaks of the mysterious and mythical Aboriginal stories for they are a part of “her blood’s
country”, the strong bloodline of her ancestors which forms an intrinsic thread throughout the land
excellent
The idea of continuous threads through generations is also embodied in Eve to Her Daughte rs
in her
realization that her daughters, as much as she attempts to warn them, “inherit” her own “faults of
character”, and will unfortunately “submissively” follow their husbands this is a bit of a
summary…
Well, you really hit the nail on the head several times in this discussion. Excellent work. Read my
comments and ensure that you follow what I’m suggesting. Get back to me if you want to talk
about it more.
Tips for the Outcome:
The discussion seems more successful when you link the overarching statement to a single poem and then
move into a comprehensive discussion of the poem. When the opportunity arises, or when the time is right,
show the connections with another poem and move into a comprehensive discussion of this next poem. Your
close analysis of the poem/s should be implicitly a discussion of the statement. So don’t spend a lot of time
talking about the statement’s ideas in general terms and mentioning how it applies to several poems…Try to
keep the poems separate and make your links through a reference to the statement. Thus,
The belief that human experience is collective and interconnected, across generations is explored in
Double Image. The speaker exists within her forbear as indicated by the line “My kinsman’s flesh, my
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kinsman’s skull/enclosed me”. But she is not merely a passive witness to his actions… (this is from a
student.)
and
In the poem South of my Days Old Dan’s self-aggrandizing stories exemplify contemporary Western
values which override and obliterate any recognition or sensitivity to the fragility and beauty of the
Australian landscape.
Dan’s stories, represent him as the hero of this epic struggle against drought and deprivation… (I
pinched these ideas from a student.)
VCE Literature, Unit 3
Outcome 2: Views and Values in the poetry of Judith Wright
You have a double period in which to complete the following task.
Choose one of the following statements about the views and values that presented in
Judith Wright’s poetry. Discuss the statement with detailed reference to no more
than three poems.
1. “Wright’s poetry challenges contemporary Western views and values that
emphasise the significance of individual achievement, consumerism, the
promotion of science rather than spirituality, reason and rationality rather
than imagination and feeling.”
OR
2. “Judith Wright’s poetry reflects her political commitment to the environment
and the rights of Indigenous Australians.”
OR
3. Judith Wright’s poetry encourages us to see that human experience is
collective and interconnected, across generations and cultures.
OR
4. Judith Wright’s poetry values imagination and passion more highly than selfcontrol and reason.
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2005
Woman to Child
You who were darkness warmed my flesh
where out of darkness rose the seed.
Then all a world I made in me;
all the world you hear and see
hung upon my dreaming blood.
There moved the multitudinous stars,
and colored birds and fishes moved.
There swam the sliding continents.
All time lay rolled in me, and sense,
and love that knew not its beloved.
O node and focus of the world;
I hold you deep within that well
you shall escape and not escape.
that mirrors still your sleeping shape;
that nurtures still your crescent cell.
I wither and you break from me;
yet though you dance in living light
I am the earth, I am the root,
I am the stem that fed the fruit,
the link that joins you to the night.
Fire Sermon
Sinister powers, the ambassador said, are moving
into our rice fields. We are a little people
and all we want is to live..
But a chemical rain descending
has blackened the fields, and
we ate the buffalo because we were starving.
Sinister powers,. he said;
and I look at the newsreel child
crying, crying quite silently, here in my house.
I can’t put out a hand to touch her,
that shadow printed on glass.
And if I could? I look at my hand.
This hand, this sinister power
and this one here on the right side
have blackened your rice fields,
my child, and killed your mother.
In the temple the great gold Buddha
smiles inward with half-closed eyes.
All is Maya, the dance, the veil,
Shiva’s violent dream.
Let me out of this dream, I cry.
I belong to a simple people
and all we want is to live.
It is not right that we slay our kinsmen,
Arjuna cried. And the answer?
What is action, what is inaction?
By me alone are they doomed and slain.
A hard answer
for those who are doomed and slain.
All is fire,.. said the Buddha, .all.
sight, sense, all forms.
They burn with the fires of lust,
anger, illusion.
Wherefore the wise man
Be a lamp to yourself. Be an island.
Let me out of this dream, I cry,
but the great gold Buddha
smiles in the temple
under a napalm rain.
The Dark One
On the other si
the dark ones s
Something leak
like the ooze fr
In the town on
mute shadows
The white talk
the faces turn a
A shudder like
runs through th
Are they still he
Let us alone.
The night ghos
only by day po
come haunting
like a shadow c
Day has anoth
Night has its tim
a depth that rh
with its alternat
Go back. Leav
the pale eyes s
from faces of p
They veer, drift
Those dark gut
their eyes, are
With a babble o
the bargaining
****
****
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Use one or more of the passages selected as the basis for a discussion of the poetry of Judith Wright.
2006
The Company of Lovers
We meet and part now over all the world.
We, the lost company,
take hands together in the night, forget
the night in our brief happiness, silently.
We who sought many things, throw all away
for this one thing, one only,
remembering that in the narrow grave
we shall be lonely.
Death marshals up his armies round us now.
Their footsteps crowd too near.
Lock your warm hand above the chilling
heart
and for a time I live without my fear.
Grope in the night to fi nd me and embrace,
for the dark preludes of the drums begin,
and round us, round the company of lovers,
Death draws his cordons in.
****
Woman to Man
The eyeless laborer in the night,
the selfless, shapeless seed I hold,
builds for its resurrection day—
silent and swift and deep from sight
foresees the unimagined light.
This is no child with a child’s face;
this has no name to name it by:
yet you and I have known it well.
This is our hunter and our chase,
the third who lay in our embrace.
This is the strength that your arm
knows,
the arc of fl esh that is my breast,
the precise crystals of our eyes.
This is the blood’s wild tree that grows
the intricate and folded rose.
This is the maker and the made;
this is the question and reply;
the blind head butting at the dark,
the blaze of light along the blade.
Oh hold me, for I am afraid.
***
Smalltown Dance
Two women find the square-root of a
That is an ancient dance:
arms wide: together: again: two forwa
your partner’s once and twice.
That white expanse
reduces to a neat
compression fitting in the smallest sp
a sheet can pack in on a cupboard she
High scented walls there were of flap
when I was small, myself.
I walked between them, playing Out o
Simpler than arms, they wrapped and
clean corridors of hiding, roofed with
saying, Your sins too are made Mond
and see, ahead
that glimpse of unobstructed waiting
Run, run before you’re seen.
But women know the scale of possibi
the limit of opportunity,
the fence,
how little chance
there is of getting out. The sheets that
sometimes struggle from the peg,
don’t travel far. Might symbolise
something. Knowing where danger lie
you have to keep things orderly.
The household budget will not stretch
And they can demonstrate it in a danc
First pull those wallowing white drea
spread arms: then close them. Fold
those beckoning roads to some impos
put them away and close the cupboard
****
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