O Man, O Woman, Grievest So?
O man, O woman, grievest so?
Art shut away from all delight,
And must thou leave this garden plot?
O Eve, O Adam, question not.
The God is kind who would be cruel.
He does not know the hearts he made.
Turn unreluctant to the shade,
To bitterest struggle, darkest night;
man, O woman, happier so.
Periodicity
My friend declares
Being woman and virgin she
Takes small account of periodicity
And she is right.
Her days are calmly spent
For her sex-function is irrelevant.
But I whose life
Is monthly broke in twain
Must seek some sort of meaning in my pain.
Women, I say,
Are beautiful in change,
Remote, immortal, like the moon they range.
Or call my pain
A skirmish in the whole
Tremendous conflict between body and soul.
Meaning must lie,
Some beauty surely dwell
In the fierce depths and uttermost pits of hell.
Yet still I seek,
Month after month in vain,
Meaning and beauty in recurrent pain.
