Women

I don't know how I should feel about this poem. Bogan seems to straddle the line between feminist and post-feminist writers, so I don't know if I should take this at face value as a critique of women's attitudes in a chauvinist time or as a cynical sneer at the way men look at women. Either way, I find it somewhat disturbing.


Can someone enlighten me? Because I'm pretty sure no matter which way I see it, I'm probably wrong.

Women

Louise Bogan

Women have no wilderness in them,  
They are provident instead,  
Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts  
To eat dusty bread.  


They do not see cattle cropping red winter grass,  
They do not hear  
Snow water going down under culverts  
Shallow and clear.  


They wait, when they should turn to journeys,  
They stiffen, when they should bend.  
They use against themselves that benevolence  
To which no man is friend.  


They cannot think of so many crops to a field  
Or of clean wood cleft by an axe.  
Their love is an eager meaninglessness  
Too tense, or too lax.  


They hear in every whisper that speaks to them  
A shout and a cry.  
As like as not, when they take life over their door-sills  
They should let it go by.