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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


A BREACH TOO DEEP by NANCY MACDOUGALL

First Line: IT IS A BREACH TOO DEEP
Last Line: WE STILL ARE BALKED BY ONE ANOTHER'S EYES.

It is a breach too deep,
As though a great impenetrable sleep
Lay deep between.
Perhaps it might have been
Less difficult once when the world was young,

But now across the span dark age is hung.
The souls of women sleep,
Behind their eyes. Men cannot creep
Beyond their secrets, and should never try.
They cannot know the reason women cry.
It is too late or soon to penetrate
Why some go fiercely and some sit and wait.

I, woman, sometimes sit and stare
Blindly at something just above his hair,
Until his stirring makes me realize
The questioning resentment of his eyes.
And though I smile, the silence mounts so high,
To utter my heart's weight would be to die.

I know that this is so.
I am too bruised with trying, not to know
That men and women cannot bridge the span
Unless there be a god-light in the man.
And though we often ponder and surmise,
We still are balked by one another's eyes.



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