A silence slipping around like death —
because ye have broken your own chain —
cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee!
Did you ever fall in love with a man who was no good?

Ever since the great planes were murdered at the end
of the garden, fashionable women [fail at] home.
God in me is the fury of the bare heath [even as]
He bathes his soul in women’s wrath.

I am not human. Laugh, and the world laughs:
a mask-face of old grief — death-mask, massive.
Next Heaven, my vows to thee, O sacred Muse!
O you who are my heavenly pain of hell!

She knows, being woman, that for him she holds [all].
Tell me [then], upon her soothing breast, [who has]
forgotten Paris, and his fate; [and when all else fails],
[makes] of you a virtue [out] of necessity.

. . . . . . . . 

Cento by Susan Powers Bourne
from The World Split Open