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| Denise Levertov |
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| The Mutes | ||||
| Those groans that men use passing a woman on the street or on the steps of the subway to tell her she is a female and their flesh knows it, are they a sort of tune, an ugly enough song, sung by a bird with a slit tongue but meant for music? Or are they the muffled roaring of deafmutes trapped in building that is slowly filling with smoke? Perhaps both. Such men most often look as if groan were all they could do, yet a woman, in spite of herself, knows itīs a tribute: if she were lacking all grace theyīd pass her in silence: so itīs not only to say sheīs a warm hole. Itīs a word in grief-language, nothing to do with primitive, not an ur-language; language stricken, sickened, cast down in decreptitude. She wants to throw the tribute away, dis- gusted, and canīt, it goes on buzzing in her ear, it changes the pace of her walk, the torn posters in echoing corridors spell it out, it quakes and gnashes as the train comes in. Her pulse sullenly had picked up speed, but the cars slow down and jar to a stop while her understanding keeps on translating: īlife after life after life goes by without poetry, without seemliness without love.ī |
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