Witchy & Weird Poem of the Week: “Witch-Wife” by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Here the Moon-Birds will sacrifice to you, our readers, a weekly poem which has caught our eye(s)—poems which invoke, in whatever way, witchy-ness, spooky-ness, the sacred feminine, the mysterious, or the otherworldly. 

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Millay is a regular favorite of mine, and this is a topical one. There’s a simple and powerful sentiment at the close of this poem I absolutely love, the speaker’s witch-wife as loving (not cold, not a spinster), but ineffably her own.

Enjoy.

And then read more Millay.

 

Witch-Wife

c. 1917

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950)

 

She is neither pink nor pale,

And she never will be all mine;

She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,

And her mouth on a valentine.

 

She has more hair than she needs;

In the sun ’tis a woe to me!

And her voice is a string of colored beads,

Or steps leading into the sea.

 

She loves me all that she can,

And her ways to my ways resign;

But she was not made for any man,

And she never will be all mine.

 

Wickedly Yours,

Baba Yaga

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