Rage by Mary Oliver

You are the dark song

of the morning;

serious and slow,

you shave, you dress,

you descend the stairs

in your public clothes

and drive away, you become

the wise and powerful one

who makes all the days

possible in the world.

But you were also the red song in the night

stumbling through the house

to the child's bed

to the damp rose of her body, 

leaving your bitter taste.

And forever those nights snarl

the delicate machinery of the days.

When the child's mother smiles

you see on her cheekbones

a truth you will never confess;

and you will see how the child grows -

timidly, crouching in corners.

Sometimes in the wide night 

you hear the most mournful cry,

a ravished and terrible moment.

In your dream,s, she's a tree

that will never come to leaf

in your dream,s she's a watch

you dropped on the dark stones

till no one could gather the fragements - 

in your dreams you have sullied and murdered,

and dreams do not lie.