Kingdom of Women

And in a still later version, the wisewoman doesn’t even appear. She is the ever-receding goal, the pretext for the young warrior-novice’s adventures. The holy grail

Didn’t know what it was like when women had been prey, and the predators had been in charge

They didn’t know what it was to fear walking down a dark street alone, hiking through a forest alone.

fear walking down a dark street alone

They didn’t know what it was like to be belittled, silenced, harassed

The women alive today, most of them, had been born afterwards

True peace, not merely a pause between war

And after that came all these decades of peace

Averil had counseled her against violence.
But then came the war. They brought their violence to us

or that the befuddled priest she consulted would someday have a cult following all across the planet