In the valley of prophesy the mists creep
limned in the light of torches glowing umber and ringing
with the chink of jade on jade, the singing of countless voices.
I was one of them, not so long ago
before I learned the scribner's art
before my hands were stained with ink
before the ink stains could betray me.
They have their uses for women like me.
In towers, at desks, hunched over in the night --
onlookers to their history not participants.
The other women, through the glass they see a world, a life, lost.
The solemn scritching, the scent of ink,
no match for what they had before they were overcome by temptation,
by knowledge.
I see, within this room and on this page,
a new life --
not a secondhand life, no powerless scribe --
but one who paints them with words as they truly are
as they will never see themselves.
So much power in one brass nib.