“The
Silence of Women”
Old
men, as time goes on, grow softer, sweeter,
while
their wives get angrier.
You
see them hauling the men across the mall
or
pushing them down on chairs,
"Sit
there! and don't you move!"
A
lifetime of yes has left them
hissing
bent as snakes.
It
seems even their bones will turn
against
them, once the fruitful years are gone.
Something
snaps off the houselights,
and the
cells go dim;
the
chicken hatching back into the egg.
Oh lifetime of silence!
words
scattered like a sybil's leaves.
Voices
thrown into a baritone storm—
whose
shrilling is a soulful wind
blown
through an instrument
that
cannot beat time
but must
make music
any way
it can.
—Liz
Rosenberg, 1994