One Woman To All Women

I don't care whether I am beautiful to you
        You other women.
Nothing of me that you see is my own;
A man balances, bone unto bone
Balances, everything thrown
        In the scale, you other women.

You may look and say to yourselves, I do
        Not show like the rest.
My face may not please you, nor my stature; yet if you knew
How happy I am, how my heart in the wind rings true
Like a bell that is chiming, each stroke as a stroke
falls due,
        You other women:

You would draw your mirror towards you, you would wish
        To be different.
There's the beauty you cannot see, myself and him
Balanced in glorious equilibrium,
The swinging beauty of equilibrium,
        You other women.

There's this other beauty, the way of the stars
        You straggling women.
If you knew how I swerve in peace, in the equi- poise
With the man, if you knew how my flesh enjoys
The swinging bliss no shattering ever destroys
        You other women:

You would envy me, you would think me wonderful
        Beyond compare;
You would weep to be lapsing on such harmony
As carries me, you would wonder aloud that he
Who is so strange should correspond with me
        Everywhere.

You see he is different, he is dangerous,
        Without pity or love.
And yet how his separate being liberates me
And gives me peace! You cannot see
How the stars are moving in surety
        Exquisite, high above.

We move without knowing, we sleep, and we travel on,
        You other women.
And this is beauty to me, to be lifted and gone
In a motion human inhuman, two and one
Encompassed, and many reduced to none,
        You other women.

KENSINGTON