A Story True At Times (In Answer To Marge Piercy) Poem by Gert Strydom

Remember the farmer
whose raven turned
into a lovely black haired woman?

Her hair shone with a metallic bluish sheen
and there was warmth in her lovely dark eyes
and her voice had a sweet melody
and she was very intelligent, sociable
and highly adaptable to farm life,

but just after their wedding,
she urged her husband for more and more jewels
loved precious stones, anything gleaming
and with time her manners became
increasingly material, wanting more, raving,
wanting a better house,
as if on the lookout
to be better than the neighbours

she started storing up seeds and nuts,
fruit, the meat of small animals and mammals
in the pantry
and went out to walk, to climb on the high cliffs
peering up at the highest trees

and her voice started to grow more hoarse
and when he got home one day
after labouring under the hot sun
the house was shattered
and everything pulled apart in shreds
and he saw a raven flying away
screeching before disappearing in the blue
and the truth remains
that although courtship turns birds into ladies
marriage, maturity
and age turn them back into old mad crows.


[Reference: A Story Wet as Tears by Marge Piercy.]