Irrefutable, beautifully smug <br />As Venus, pedestalled on a half-shell <br />Shawled in blond hair and the salt <br />Scrim of a sea breeze, the women <br />Settle in their belling dresses. <br />Over each weighty stomach a face <br />Floats calm as a moon or a cloud. <br /> <br />Smiling to themselves, they meditate <br />Devoutly as the Dutch bulb <br />Forming its twenty petals. <br />The dark still nurses its secret. <br />On the green hill, under the thorn trees, <br />They listen for the millennium, <br />The knock of the small, new heart. <br /> <br />Pink-buttoned infants attend them. <br />Looping wool, doing nothing in particular, <br />They step among the archetypes. <br />Dusk hoods them in Mary-blue <br />While far off, the axle of winter <br />Grinds round, bearing down the straw, <br />The star, the wise grey men.<br /><br />Sylvia Plath<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/heavy-woman/
