At last free,

at last I am a woman free!

No more tied to the kitchen,

stained amid the stained pots,

no more bound to the husband

who thought me less

than the shade he wove with his hands.

No more anger, no more hunger,

I sit now in the shade of my own tree.

Meditating thus, I am happy, I am serene.

                                                                            ~Sumangalamata*

*”Sumangala’s Mother,” the wife of a maker of hats and shade-umbrellas, was a member of the earliest community of women followers of the Buddha.

cited:

Women in Praise of the Sacred

Ed: Jane Hirshfield