Agnes Lee

From “Pictures of Women”

IN her home a woman I know

Is a bark-bound tree;

The flowers bloom at her feet,

But she does not see.

The knife has glittered by

To the forest to prune,

And left her deaf to the wind

And blind to the moon.

She must live on her sap

In her ease and dark,

Until she shrivels and dies

In her walls of bark.

Unless the glittering knife

Should return her way,

And set its steel to the bark

And let in day.