That isn’t true of the linen

And it isn’t true of me.

Let the river run over the linen

Quick it’s clean as can be.

2

At eleven I was as sinful

As the cheapest girl-for-cash

And really not till fourteen

Did I mortify the flesh.

A shade gray was the linen

I dunked it, the river ran.

Now it lies there fit for a virgin

As though never breathed upon.

3

I was fallen already

Before I went with a man.

I stank to heaven, a scarlet

Whore of Babylon.

The linen in the river swishes

Gently to and fro

And feels in the rippling kisses:

How softly I whiten now.

4

For when my first embraced me

And I held him embraced

I felt from my breasts and belly

The wickedness released.

That’s the way with linen

And that was the way with me.

The waters run, they hasten

Where the dirt cries, Set me free!

5

But when the others came

A doleful year began.

They gave me a bad name.

I was a bad woman.

Saving up and fasting

Was never a woman’s cure.

Linen left long in the basket

Goes gray even there.

6

And then another followed

In another year.

I saw that myself and all things

Were other than before.

Dip it in the river, rinse it!

Sun, wind and dolly blue!

Use it and dispense it:

It will be good as new.

7

I know: much still may happen

Till nothing happens anymore.

But if you never wore it

What was the linen for?

And when the linen’s ragged

And the dirt won’t wash away

The river takes the tatters.

All comes to this one day.

BALLAD

And when she lay on her deathbed

She said to him: I have been

Faithful to you nearly fourteen years

And now what does it mean?

He spoke to her and held her hand

That was whiter than the sheets of the bed.

My dear wife, for these fourteen years

I thank you, he said.

The dress I always wore, she said

The color of it was gray

And what I ate was soup and fish

I’m almost sorry to say.

He held her hand the way someone holds

A weak rope in the sea

Already drowning and said: You were

A good wife to me.

And she said to him, How quickly it goes!

How white my hand is, look!

And she saw the words “Like a broken reed”

On a page in an old schoolbook.

But he stood by her and said to her

(And didn’t immediately know

Whether what he said was right) and he said:

Perhaps it’s all one now.

DISCOVERY ABOUT A YOUNG WOMAN

A morning’s parting, and about to go my way

A woman in the doorway, casually observed

And then I saw: one strand in her hair was gray

And found I could not bring myself to leave.

Mutely I reached out for her breast, and when

She asked me why—pointing at last night’s bed—