Talking of women - "there in that golden jungle I walk alone"

explore #327 on the 24/07/08

Women poets are a sadly neglected group. In this series I am going to try and illustrate some of this beautiful poetry. This poem called The Sisters was written by the Australian poet Judith Wright (1915 - 2000).

The poem ends like this:

 

........................................."My life was wide and wild,

and who can know my heart? There in that golden jungle

I walk alone," say the old sisters on the veranda.

 

 

The Sisters – Judith Wright

 

In the vine-shadows on the veranda,

under the yellow leaves, in the cooling sun,

sit the two sisters. Their slow voices run

like little winter creeks dwindled by frost and wind,

and the square of sunlight moves on the veranda.

 

They remember the gay young men on their tall horses

who came courting; the dancing and the smells of leather

and wine, the girls whispering by the fire together:

even their dolls and ponies, all they have left behind

moves in the yellow shadows on the veranda.

 

Thinking of their lives apart and the men they married,

thinking of the marriage-bed and the birth of the first child,

and they look down smiling. “My life was wide and wild,

and who can know my heart? There in that golden jungle

I walk alone,” say the old sisters on the veranda.

(1949)

 

Done