brutāla un cienījama balss
If you're a woman turning fifty,
You're a woman who feels cheated.
This message now will be repeated.

The bittersweetness known as Jesus
Was not some nice man saying he is
Not quite a feminist and not quite not one.

Every man's a rapist until he's done
The bitch relieves the dog. The wound, the gun.
The Sermon on the Mount, the Son.

Was it better back in Peapack
Riding over hills to hounds,
Your consciousness not yet raised?

At Foxcroft, under Miss Charlotte,
Polishing your boots till they were bittersweet,
The fields were a girl's cantata.

Doing the rumba at the regatta,
Plato in Greek, amphetamines your stallion, were your alma mater,
And the Metropolitan, and the Modern...and then S/M.

Oh, the tiny furs and the red stench of the fox
Of all those white girls taking cold showers
And then lining up to jump

Hair in a net over perfectly maintained fences
Everything male is a rapist, certainly God,
Except for Henry James.

At the Institute for Advanced Study,
Which your father helped organize,
Your father made lives,

Scientists he saved from the Nazis
Putting his face on the cover of Time,
Or was that for his part in building the Atom Bomb?

And otherwise--the man made gushers in Texas rise.
He macadamized the roads of Greece.
His sword was terrible and swift.

He strode up the hill in the heat.
He dove into the ice-cold pool and burst
Instantly into death like a flame.

(F. Seidel, Hair in a net)