"Their Voices Bounce Off Mirrors"

Their voices
Bounce off mirrors
Sachet through shearings
Leap to lightning rods and
Spiral there like gymnasts
Exuberant and free.

Their chant is to him

Robed, they perform their
Rituals at basins and mirrors
Chattering holiness like ancient
Priestesses in temples at rivertide
Touched and touched
Cleansed and guided
Touched and touched
They become beautified.

Their chant is of him

And should a child enter there
She is accepted as a holy thing. Mooring her innocence
Among the mirrors, They reach to her
As a Princess reached
For a babe in the Nile

Their chant is by him

And when they conclude their observance
They depart from the sanctum of ease
And return to him
To whom they are wed
By whom they are led
Through whom they are said
Beloved and Beloved

In his image they are created.

- Kristine Barrett


"The author of this poem, Kristine Barrett, was shocked to find that I thought
the poem was about temple rites. I was shocked to discover that she had, in
fact, written the poem after a visit to a beauty salon. Reading through the
poem again, I saw the similarities—that the rites of becoming beautiful,
inside or out, were directed toward the approval of a beloved lord, human or
divine. Most jarring in that haunting imagery of women's voices and hands,
the basins and mirrors, is that the final reflected image is male."
- Linda Sillitoe
(from here)