Love, It Makes You Vulnerable

An Ancient Gesture

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I thought, as I wiped my eyes 

on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: 

you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the 

back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, 

when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, 

and you don't know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.
And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture,—a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope.
Penelope, who really cried.

~Edna St. Vincent Millay