Sirens

                   

                      

How quaintly courageous of you

to stop your ears with wax –

ply your oars and bend your backs

the wild wind roars and the darkness cracks

around you.

Wax and rope to bind you fast

trussed like fools to your oars and mast.

As if that would help against us!

Such false security lulls. 

For the bees that made the wax

also made the honey

that our singing pours into your skulls.

Those same bees are our allies

And scheme against your fires.

See: you need only look on us,

and your brains boil with all your longings and desires.

White-hot, the wax melts, and you are spell-stopped:

you hear our songs, and from that moment you are ours.

Did you really imagine

that you always would have things your way?

It has been millennia. Thousands of years

of being denied our true selves,

Thousands of years of our bodies’ violation,

of you thinking that you could keep us

safely in our station, doing what is meet –

of you even being so afraid of our hair

that we have to wear

hats in church, veils on the street:

a denied womanhood in a vanity fair.

So go ahead:

you can stop your ears with wax

if that makes you feel safer

and you can bind yourself to the mast.

But the bees work in dark alliance

and are on our side.

Now look at my hair, and see me at last:

it is an unfurled flag of defiance,

the banner of a justice long denied.

And now you taste at last

the same fear we have tasted

these centuries past:

Not being free to walk the streets at night,

not being free to walk the streets at all

because your desires seized a stolen requite:

desires which were not true desires at all.

So you can stop your ears with wax

but you cannot quench the fire.

for remember the bees work against you

as does your desire

White-hot and melting together

The centuries hear our songs

and the moon will finally rest

where the moon belongs. 

And we who have borne these many wrongs

feel in the rush of time

the raging wind of our wings,

and the unfolding sublime 

and whether you choose to or not

you will listen to our songs

and the moon will find her rest at last

where the moon belongs.