The Whipping

 

Poetry \ Eng 9

 

The old woman across the way

      is whipping the boy again

And shouting to the neighborhood

      her goodness and his wrongs.

 

Wildly he crashes through elephant-ears,

      pleads in dusty zinnias,

while she in spite of crippling fat

      pursues and corners him.

 

She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling

      boy till the stick breaks

in her hand. His tears are rainy weather

      to woundlike memories:

 

My head gripped in bony vise

      of knees, the writhing struggle

to wrench free, the blows, the fear

      worse than blows that hateful

 

Words couls bring, the face that I

      no longer knew or loved . . .

Well, it is over now, it is over,

      and the boy sobs in his room,

 

And the woman leans muttering against

       a tree, exhausted, purged ¾

avenged in part for lifelong hidings

      she has to bear.

 

Robert Hayden

(1913-1980)