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