...máscara de palavras

When I wrote of the women in their dances and

wildness, it was a mask,

on their mountain, gold-hunting, singing, in orgy,

it was a mask; when I wrote of the god,

fragmented, exiled from himself, his life, the love gone

down with song,it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from myself.

There is no mountain, there is no god, there is memory

of my torn life, myself split open in sleep, the rescued

child

beside me among the doctors, and a word

of rescue from the great eyes.

No more masks! No more mythologies!

Now, for the first time, the god lifts his hand,

the fragments join in me with their own music.

Muriel Rukeyser, 1949

para Su, com a devida deferência