from I Knew a Woman

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!

Love, the poet said, is woman's whole existence.

Women see through each other, but they rarely look into themselves

Some people might say your not a very pretty woman or really pretty woman, but I want to be the one who knows the beautiful woman inside you.

Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young,
The young are beautiful—but the old are more beautiful than the young

No one could see her objectively anyway. Even those who saw her for the first time, before she had opened her mouth to sing. Found her radiant, as if her talent could not be contained in her voice and so poured like light though her skin. Then all that could be seen was the weight and the gloss of her hair and the pale pink of her cheeks and her beautiful hands.