Orpheus <br /> <br />When I wrote of the women in their dances and <br /> wildness, it was a mask, <br />on their mountain, gold-hunting, singing, in orgy, <br />it was a mask; when I wrote of the god, <br />fragmented, exiled from himself, his life, the love gone <br /> down with song, <br />it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from <br /> myself. <br /> <br />There is no mountain, there is no god, there is memory <br />of my torn life, myself split open in sleep, the rescued <br /> child <br />beside me among the doctors, and a word <br />of rescue from the great eyes. <br /> <br />No more masks! No more mythologies! <br /> <br />Now, for the first time, the god lifts his hand, <br />the fragments join in me with their own music.<br /><br />Muriel Rukeyser<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-poem-as-mask/
