What they disallowed in me, remains. What they bled from me, so stark and violent, I scooped it into my hands and drank it all back. It rolls down the corners of my soft cheeks, baptismal.
“Who are you that the whole world’s song
Is shaken out beneath your feet
Leaving you comfortless,
Who, that, as wheat
Is garnered, gather in
The blades of man’s sin
And bear that sheaf?
Lady of wrong and grief,
Blameless!”
Ezra Pound | “To Our Lady of Vicarious Atonement”