Poem for a Tuesday — “Painters” by Muriel Rukeyser

In the cave with a long-ago flare
a woman stands, her arms up. Red twig, black twig, brown twig.
A wall of leaping darkness over her.
The men are out hunting in the early light
But here in this flicker, one or two men, painting
and a woman among them.
Great living animals grow on the stone walls,
their pelts, their eyes, their sex, their hearts,
and the cave-painters touch them with life, red, brown, black,
a woman among them, painting.
_{From The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005}

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The work of poet, journalist, and political activist Muriel Rukeyser often spoke of the violence and injustice that she saw in the world around her: the Scottsboro trial in Alabama, the Gauley Bridge tragedy in West Virginia, and the Spanish Civil War. She was a passionate and eloquent observer and commentator on matters of human rights, including gender, class, and racial inequalities. Her first collection of poems Theory of Flight was awarded the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 1935. She was further awarded the first Harriet Monroe Poetry Award, the Levinson Prize, the Copernicus Prize, and a 1966 Guggenheim Fellowship. Her poem “To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century,” on the theme of Judaism as a gift, was adopted by the American Reform and Reconstructionist movements for their prayer books.

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