A Woman Under the Surface

From A Woman Under the Surface:
MOON AND EARTH


Alicia Ostriker


Of one substance, of one
Matter, they have cruelly
Broken apart. They never will touch


Each other again. The shining
Lovelier and younger
Turns away, a pitiful girl.


She is completely naked
And it hurts. The larger
Motherly one, breathlessly luminous


Emerald, and blue, and white
Traveling mists, suffers
Birth and death, birth


and death, and the shock
Of internal heat killed by external cold.
They are dancing through that blackness.


They press as if
To come closer.

"Ostriker's poems illuminate the places where myth and daily life converge. . . . [She] writes with much intelligence, in a language characterized by the clarity of its images and the precision of its rhythms."