The milk of sorrow from her frightened breast
wept a white puddle in the yellow field.
She looked around at where others had spilt.
She shaped sleightly and conjured white petals
from a mind’s trick beyond magic’s realism.
 
She had no voice to explain all the pain.
Instead, she stared out of eyes engraved
and deep-set by experience.  At times like this,
she disappeared to a place hidden from the world,
where she could sing and mesmerise snakes.
 
A thin, red line dripped from night’s exertions.
And another woman lay sawn in half,
stained and sown for cheap entertainment.
The spoils of men’s wars had been left waste
on the dear earth.  And pity seemed worthless.
 
Forgotten trophies – torn, tattered - had caught
in the bushes, flagging to the heavens.
The smirchers had long since fled and fallen
through false walls.  She picked up a wand,
but knew it to be the stick used to beat her.
 
The fake sorcery lay conjured around
the rattlefield of her strife.  She watched,
as a striped, yellow beetle laboured a leaf,
painstakingly, up a hill to the stars.
And she knew she viewed magic beyond shining paths.