By Elsa Barker
(Contemporary American poet and novelist. Author “The Frozen Grail,” etc. The following is said to be the strongest of her poems. It was written during Breshkovskaya’s last exile, before the Russian revolution released her.)
How narrow seems the round of ladies’ lives
And ladies’ duties in their smiling world,
The day this Titan woman, gray with years,
Goes out across the void to prove her soul!
Brief are the pains of motherhood that end
In motherhood’s long joy; but she has borne
The age-long travail of a cause that lies
Still-born at last on History’s cold lap.