The Woman’s First Song, from Dear Judas (1928)
by Robinson Jeffers

Never look down, stone trees.
I am only a poor half-crazed old woman
That come and sit in the grove after dark,
Too old and poor for any one to do me harm.
It is true that I’m one
Who has known great and bitter occasions.
Oh garden that the glory from my body haunted,
The shining that came forth from between my thighs . . .
Is gone: past the flower and the fall
I sit and sing a cracked song.
I bid you fishermen mending brown nets
On the white sand,
I bid you beware of the net, fishermen.
You can never see it,
It flies through the white air and we are all snapped in it.
No, but look round you.
You see men walking and they seem to be free,
But look at the faces, they’re caught.
There was never a man cut himself loose.
. . . That’s true but comfortless.
Nor dead in their graves are not free,
The mistletoe root-threads
In the wood of the oak of the earth
Are a net, are a net.