You may have trouble finding this one because it’s not in print anymore, but it is a terrific collection of poetry throughout the ages by poets who are women.

It starts with anonymous Egyptian poets from 1500 BC and the biblical Song of Deborah, moves through ancient Greece, Rome, China, and India, working chronologically until it ends with a poem from 1972 (AD). The poems span love, loss, anger, rage, melancholy, triumph, playfulness.

Here are a few of my favorites:

My lover capable of terrible lies
at night lay close to me
in a dream
that lied like truth.

I woke up, still deceived,
and caressed by bed
thinking it my lover.

It’s terrible. I grow lean
in loneliness,
like a water lily
gnawed like a beetle.

• Kaccipettu Nannaakaiyar, 1st-3rd Century (AD), India. Translated by A.K. Ramanujan.

A half-deaf, bald, one-handed,
Stuttering, pint-sized, pimply,
Pigeon-toed, cross-eyed man,
When mocked by a lying pimp,
A thieving murderous drunk,
Of his misfortune said:
‘I’m not to blame – you think
I asked to be like this?
But you!…the credit’s yours.
Your Maker gave you nothing.
Behold! A self-made man.’

• Kassia, 9th Century (AD), Byzantine Greece.

When my love becomes
All-powerful,
I turn inside out
My garments of the night,
Night dark as leopard-flower.

• Ono no Komachi, 834-80 (AD), Japan. Translated by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite.

My love, how could you heart consider
I’ve neglected you
because I did not welcome you
as you desired?

If you but knew how fast woman must bind
the lover whom she dreads to lose,
you would find I chose
my actions with the hope
your love for me would sharpen as it grew.

Sweet heart, do not stop loving me,
for my heart heeds nothing, only loving you.

• Anonymous: Motets, 13th Century, France.

Sad Day in Berlin

I’m a tiger in the rain
water parts my fur
drops drip into my eyes

I shuffle on slowly, drag my paws
along the Friedrichstrasse
and am burnt out in the rain

When the lights turn red
I beat my way through the traffic
go to the cafe for a vermouth
devour the band and sway off

Sharply I roar the rain at the Alexanderplatz
the tall block gets wet loses its belt
(I growl: one does what one can)

But it rains the seventh day
and I am cross up to my lashes

I snarl the street empty
and sit down among honest seagulls

They all look left into the Spree
And when I mighty tiger howl
they get what I mean: there must be
other tigers about

• Sarah Kirsch, Early 20th Century, East Germany. Translated by Gerda Mayer.

Clams

At midnight I awoke.
The clams I’d bought that evening
were alive in a corner of the kitchen,
their mouths open.

‘In the morning
I’ll eat you,
every last one of you.‘

I laughed
a witch’s laugh.
After that
I could only sleep through the night,
my mouth slightly open.

• Ishigaki Rin, early 20th Century, Japan. Translated by Hiroaki Sato.

Song

You’re wondering if I’m lonely:
OK then, yes, I’m lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I’m lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawn’s first cold breath of the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I’m lonely
it’s with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it’s neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning.

• Adrienne Rich, Early 20th Century, United States.

Such beautiful words.

I could have gone on all day sharing the poems from this book that light me up. But I am not going to do that. Poetry doesn’t read the same online. Print this post and read it aloud. Roll the words on your tongue like a menthol cough drop. Sit with the poets’ thoughts, letting them percolate, bubble up into the tiny glass dome on the top of the coffee pot, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps that’s what she meant.

If you find this book at a book sale or a used book store, snap it up. Place it on your bedside table and savor it, one poem per evening, like the last of the Thin Mints, hidden in the back of freezer and doled out, two per evening with a cup of tea, to finish off a perfect day.