Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE BROKEN BOW, by JANET B. MONTGOMERY MCGOVERN


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE BROKEN BOW, by                    
First Line: Proud was I of my bow and quiver of arrows
Last Line: But men's scorn is easier to hear than my own scorn or amida's.
Subject(s): Birds


PROUD was I of my bow and quiver of arrows;
That birthday gift the morn I was nine;
Real arrows that would kill real birds I was told.
It was true, for when, singing with joy,
Into the woods I went, to slay sweeter singers,
These fell. Then like a savage I shouted;
I danced with delight; pride-drunk and self-pleased.
I had proved myself, I believed,
A worthy scion of a noble race,
A race famed for its archers, in days
When men slew each other with arrows.
The birds I had shot were quite dead
When my man-servant brought them,
And, kneeling, presented with praise these proofs of my prowess.
But one I myself found was not dead;
Only wounded and gasping. My man hurried forward.
Out of its pain he would put it, he said.
But I waved him away. The wounded bird
I held in my hands; I drew out the arrow,
Its blood against my breast I tried to staunch—
Useless my efforts; a man would have known.
A child believes that which it wills must be,
And I willed the life of that bird. But it passed—
Passed I think into me; or so at the time it seemed,
For as its fluttering heart, held close against my heart,
Grew weaker, and the fluttering ceased,
And the eyes, looking up into mine, glazed and grew dim;
The pain of that arrow-wound entered my breast.
I staggered and but for my man would have fallen.
My heart, too, for the time seemed to cease in its beating.
Then-then-I knew that which man may not utter;
Nor woman—the tenderer man; nor even a child.
Men thought me mad when I tried to speak. Only I knew the others were mad;
These who derided; those who still would slay;
For in that moment Amida, the God of Light and of Life,
Took me to his breast, as I had taken the bird.
And I knew that my life and the bird's and Amida's—
All that alive and breathe and feel,
On earth, in heaven, in hell—are one.
And that one day all must know, as in that moment I knew
So when I was able to move, I broke my bow,
And ever since men have called me coward and weakling.
But men's scorn is easier to hear than my own scorn or Amida's.





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