Lilith

I think beauty is a bad bargain made of life. Men’s iron sinews hew them room in the world And use deceits to gain them trophies: O, when our beauty fails us did we not use Deceits, where were our room in the world— Only our room in the world? Are not the songs and devices of men Moulds they have made after my scarlet mouth, Of cunning words and contours of bronze And viols and gathered air? They without song have sung me Boldly and shamelessly. I am no wanton, no harlot; I have been pleased and smiled my pleasure, I am a wife with a woman’s natural ways. Yet through the shadow of the pomegranates Filters a poison day by day, And to a malady turns The blond, the ample music of my heart: Inward to eat my heart My thoughts are worms that suck my softness all away. I watch the dumb eyeless hours Drop their tears, then shapeless moaning drop.

Unfathomable is my mouth’s dream Do not men say? So secret are my far eyes, Weaving for iron men profound subtleties.

Sorceress they name me; And my eyes harden, and they say, “How may those eyes know love If God made her without a heart?

“Her tears, her moaning, Her sad profound gaze, The dishevelled lustres of her hair Moon-storm like” they say, “These are her subtleties” men say. My husband sleeps, The ghosts of my virgin days do not trouble him: His sleep can be over-long, For there is that in my embers Pride and blushes of fire, the outraged blood, His sleep makes me remember.

Sleep, hairy hunter; sleep! You are not hungry more, Having fed on my deliciousness; Your sleep is not adultery to me,

For you were wed to a girl And I am a woman. My lonely days are not whips to my honour.

[She dries her tears with her hair, then fingers the amulet at her throat.]

Yours, friend.