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41 " She helped the hunter with the cooking as a husband helps his wife: when he had gone out to hunt and left something to stew, she would take the pot off the fire. But she never knew when to take it off; sometimes it was cooked to pieces, and she never got it right except by accident. But when the accident happened the hunter would laugh and say, "You're as good a cook as my mother!" After all, why should he want her to keep house? If you have a seal that could talk, would you want it to sweep the floor? "
― Randall Jarrell , The Animal Family
42 " Star, that looked so long among the stonesAnd picked from them, half iron and half dirt,One; and bent and put it to her lipsAnd breathed upon it till at last it burnedUncertainly, among the stars its sisters—Breathe on me still, star, sister "
― Randall Jarrell
43 " Next DayMoving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,I take a boxAnd add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.The slacked or shorted, basketed, identicalFood-gathering flocksAre selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,Is learning what to overlook. And I am wiseIf that is wisdom.Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelvesAnd the boy takes it to my station wagon,What I’ve becomeTroubles me even if I shut my eyes.When I was young and miserable and prettyAnd poor, I’d wishWhat all girls wish: to have a husband,A house and children. Now that I’m old, my wishIs womanish:That the boy putting groceries in my carSee me. It bewilders me he doesn’t see me.For so many yearsI was good enough to eat: the world looked at meAnd its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me,The eyes of strangers!And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vileImaginings within my imagining,I too have takenThe chance of life. Now the boy pats my dogAnd we start home. Now I am good.The last mistaken,Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blindHappiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palmSome soap and water--It was so long ago, back in some GayTwenties, Nineties, I don’t know . . . Today I missMy lovely daughterAway at school, my sons away at school,My husband away at work--I wish for them.The dog, the maid,And I go through the sure unvarying daysAt home in them. As I look at my life,I am afraidOnly that it will change, as I am changing:I am afraid, this morning, of my face.It looks at meFrom the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,The smile I hate. Its plain, lined lookOf gray discoveryRepeats to me: “You’re old.” That’s all, I’m old.And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeralI went to yesterday.My friend’s cold made-up face, granite among its flowers,Her undressed, operated-on, dressed bodyWere my face and body.As I think of her I hear her telling meHow young I seem; I am exceptional;I think of all I have.But really no one is exceptional,No one has anything, I’m anybody,I stand beside my graveConfused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary. "
44 " Oh, Tatyana, The Angel comes: better to squawk like a chickenThan to say with truth, “But I’m a good girl,” And Meet his Challenge with a last firm strangeUncomprehending smile; and—then, then!—seeThe blind date that has stood you up: your life.(For all this, if it isn’t, perhaps, life,Has yet, at least, a language of its own Different from the books’; worse than the books’.)And yet, the ways we miss our lives are life. "
― Randall Jarrell , The Complete Poems
45 " May I die, not on the day When it no longer matters that I’m a woman, But on the day that it no longer matters That I am human: on that day When they put into me more than thy get out of me. So I say, in human vanity: have they ever Got out of me more than they put into me? May I die on the day the world ends. "