Thoughts After Ruskin- Elma Mitchell

Thoughts After Ruskin- Elma Mitchell

  • Submitted By: wildflower
  • Date Submitted: 01/24/2009 3:05 AM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 255
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Thoughts After Ruskin
by Elma Mitchell

Women remind him of lilies and roses.
Me they remind rather of blood and soap,
Armed with a warm rag,assaulting noses,
Ears,neck, mouth and all the secret places:

Armed with a sharp knife, cutting up liver,
Holding hearts to bleed under a running tap,
Gutting and stuffing, pickling and preserving,
Scalding, blanching, broiling, pulverizing,
-All the terrible chemistry of their kitchens.

Their distant husbands lean across the mahogany
And delicately manipulate the market,
While safe at home, the tender and the gentle
Are killing tiny mice, dead snap by the neck,
Asphyxiating flies, evicting spiders,
Scrubbing, scouring aloud, disturbing cupboards,
Committing things to dustbins, twisting, wringing,
wrists red,and knuckles white and fingers puckered,
Pulpy, tepid. Steering screaming cleaners
Around the snags of furniture, they straighten
And haul out sheets from under the incontinent
And heavy old, stoop to importunate young,
Tugging, folding, tucking, zipping, buttoning,
Spooning in food, encouraging excretion,
Moping up vomit, stabbbing cloth with needles,
Contorting wool around their knitting needles,
Creating snug and comfy on their needles.

Their huge hands! their everywhere eyes! their voices
Raised to convey across the hullabaloo.
Their massive thighs and breasts dispensing comfort,
their bloody passages and hairy crannies,
their wombs that pocket a man upside down!

And when all's over, off with overalls,
Quickly consulting clocks, they go upstairs,
Sit and sigh a little, brushing hair,
And somehow find, in mirrors, colours, odours,
Thier essence of lilies and roses.

Poetic devices used by the poet,

1. Enjambment
2.Sibilance

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