DUMB WOMAN

Irene Claremont de Castillejo

 
 

 
Women who still wear shawls
And wrap your babies close against your breast,
Pray for speech.
 
Longingly man looks into your eyes
But only sees his own reflection;
In dumb despair you trip him as he walks.
 
He needs the treasure
Drowned in the pool of unshed tears
Beneath your dumbness;
 
For he is writhing in the prison he himself has built,
Your clever sisters forge the bars;
Free him, with the truth he has rejected.
 
Women who still wear shawls
And wrap your babies close against your breast,
Pray for speech!

 

 

From Freedom of the City, Outposts Publications, London, 1958. By kind permission of the author and publisher. .

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Irene Claremont de Castillejo is a London analyst. Her late husband was Jose de Castillejo, noted Spanish educator. In addition to the collection of poems from which we print three, she is the author of Numbers 89 and 98 of the Guild of Pastoral Psychology pamphlets.