The Whipping

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 could 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—

avenged in part for lifelong hidings

    she has had to bear.