In A
Valediction Forbidding Mourning,
John Donne
uses a compass
to represent
his love for his wife.
She might
have wished for a different metaphor,
like maybe a
thick, locked door,
or even a
different life.
Twelve children
in sixteen years did her in
just as
surely as a gun or club or knife.
So that’s
what happened to the wife.
© Julianne
Carlile
