Denise Levertov

Here you will find thePoemHypocrite Womenof poet Denise Levertov

Hypocrite Women

Hypocrite women, how seldom we speak of our own doubts, while dubiously we mother man in his doubt! And if at Mill Valley perched in the trees the sweet rain drifting through western air a white sweating bull of a poet told us our cunts are ugly?why didn't we admit we have thought so too? (And what shame? They are not for the eye!) No, they are dark and wrinkled and hairy, caves of the Moon ... And when a dark humming fills us, a coldness towards life, we are too much women to own to such unwomanliness. Whorishly with the psychopomp we play and plead?and say nothing of this later. And our dreams, with what frivolity we have pared them like toenails, clipped them like ends of split hair.