My friend declares
Being woman and virgin she
Takes small account of periodicity
And she is right.
Her days are calmly spent
For her sex-function is irrelevant.
But I whose life
Is monthly broke in twain
Must seek some sort of meaning in my pain.
Women, I say,
Are beautiful in change,
Remote, immortal, like the moon they range.
Or call my pain
A skirmish in the whole
Tremendous conflict between body and soul.
Meaning must lie,
Some beauty surely dwell
In the fierce depths and uttermost pits of hell.
Yet still I seek,
Month after month in vain,
Meaning and beauty in recurrent pain.
June, 1917