For all those who died- <br />stripped naked, shaved, shorn. <br /> <br />For all those who screamed <br />in vain to the Great Goddess <br />only to have their tongues <br />ripped out at the root. <br /> <br />For all those who were pricked, racked, broken on the wheel <br />for the sins of their Inquisitors. <br /> <br />For all those whose beauty <br />stirred their torturers to fury; <br />& for all those whose ugliness did the same. <br /> <br />For all those who were neither ugly nor beautiful, <br />but only women who would not submit. <br /> <br />For all those quick fingers <br />broken in the vise. <br /> <br />For all those soft arms <br />pulled from their sockets. <br /> <br />For all those budding breasts <br />ripped with hot pincers. <br /> <br />For all those midwives killed merely for the sin <br />of delivering man <br />to an imperfect world. <br /> <br />For all those witch-women, my sisters, <br />who breathed freer <br />as the flames took them, <br /> <br />knowing as they shed <br />their female bodies, <br />the seared flesh falling like fruit <br />in the flames, <br /> <br />that death alone would cleanse them <br />of the sin for which they died <br /> <br />the sin of being born a woman, <br />who is more than the sum <br />of her parts.<br /><br />Erica Jong<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/for-all-those-who-died/
