I DON’T care whether I am beautiful to you
You other women.
Nothing of me that you see is
my own;
A man
balances, bone unto bone
Balances, everything thrown
In the scale, you other
women.
You may look and say to yourselves, I do
Not show like the
rest.
My face may
not please you, nor my stature; yet
if you knew
How happy I am, how my heart in the wind rings
true
Like a bell
that is chiming, each stroke as a stroke
falls due,
You other
women:
You would draw your mirror towards you, you
would wish
To be different.
There’s the beauty you cannot
see, myself and him
Balanced in glorious equilibrium,
The swinging beauty of
equilibrium,
You
other women.
There’s this other beauty, the way of the
stars
You
straggling women.
If you knew how I swerve in peace, in the equi- poise
With the man, if you knew how
my flesh enjoys
The swinging bliss no shattering ever destroys
You other
women:
You would envy me, you would think me wonder-
ful
Beyond
compare;
You would
weep to be lapsing on such harmony
As carries me, you would wonder aloud that
he
Who is so
strange should correspond with me
Everywhere.
You see he is different, he is dangerous,
Without pity or
love.
And yet how
his separate being liberates me
And gives me peace! You cannot see
How the stars are moving in
surety
Exquisite,
high above.
We move without knowing, we sleep, and we
travel on,
You other women.
And this is beauty to me, to
be lifted and gone
In a motion human inhuman, two and one
Encompassed, and many reduced
to none,
You other
women.
KENSINGTON