Poetry Sunday: The Weavers

The Weavers

BY LINDA GREGERSON
As sometimes, in the gentler months, the sun
will return
                          before the rain has altogether
                                                      stopped and through

this lightest of curtains the curve of it shines
with a thousand
                            inclinations and so close
                                                        is the one to the

one adjacent that you cannot tell where magenta
for instance begins
                           and where the all-but-magenta
                                                      has ended and yet

you’d never mistake the blues for red, so these two,
the girl and the
                          goddess, with their earth-bred, grass-
                                                      fed, kettle-dyed

wools, devised on their looms
transitions so subtle no
                           hand could trace nor eye discern
                                                       their increments,

yet the stories they told were perfectly clear.
The gods in their heaven,
                           the one proposed. The gods in
                                                       heat, said the other.

And ludicrous too, with their pinions and swansdown,
fins and hooves,
                           their shepherds’ crooks and pizzles.
                                                       Till mingling

with their darlings-for-a-day they made
a progeny so motley it
                           defied all sorting-out.
                                                      It wasn’t the boasting

brought Arachne all her sorrow
nor even
                           the knowing her craft so well.
                                                      Once true

and twice attested.
It was simply the logic she’d already
                            taught us how
                                                       to read.

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