Denise Levertov

Here you will find the Poem Hypocrite Women of poet Denise Levertov

Hypocrite Women

Hypocrite women, how seldom we speak 
of our own doubts, while dubiously 
we mother man in his doubt! 


And if at Mill Valley perched in the trees 
the sweet rain drifting through western air 
a white sweating bull of a poet told us 


our cunts are ugly?why didn't we 
admit we have thought so too? (And 
what shame? They are not for the eye!) 


No, they are dark and wrinkled and hairy, 
caves of the Moon ... And when a 
dark humming fills us, a 


coldness towards life, 
we are too much women to 
own to such unwomanliness. 


Whorishly with the psychopomp 
we play and plead?and say 
nothing of this later. And our dreams, 


with what frivolity we have pared them 
like toenails, clipped them like ends of 
split hair.