The Prediction

That night the moon drifted over the pond,

turning the water to milk, and under

the boughs of the trees, the blue trees,

a woman walked, and for an instant

the future came to her:

rain falling on her husband's grave, rain falling

on the lawns of her children, her own mouth

filling with cold air, strangers moving into her house,

a man in her room writing a poem, the moon drifting into it,

a woman strolling under its trees, thinking of death,

thinking of him thinking of her, and the wind rising

and taking the moon and leaving the paper dark.

-Mark Strand

Painters

In the cave with a long-ago flare

a woman stands, her arms up. Red twig, black twig, brown twig.

A wall of leaping darkness over her.

The men are out hunting in the early light

But here in this flicker, one or two men, painting

and a woman among them.

Great living animals grow on the stone walls,

their pelts, their eyes, their sex, their hearts,

and the cave-painters touch them with life, red, brown, black

a woman among them, painting.

-Muriel Rukeyser