One Woman To All Women

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 wonderful             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