A Goddess's Chant

I am all women, I am every woman.
Wherever women are suffering,
I am there.
Wherever woman are struggling,
I am there.
Wherever woman are fighting for their liberation,
I am there.

I am at the bedside of the woman giving birth,
screaming in labor;
I am with the women selling their bodies
in third world countries so
that her children may eat;
I am with the woman selling her
body in the streets of American cities
to feed the habit she acquired
from her boyfriend.

I am with the woman who never sees
the light outside her kitchen;
I am with the woman who never sees
the light outside her factory;
I am with the woman whose fingers
are still from endless typing and
whose legs ache from the high heels
she must wear to please her boss.

I am with the woman bleeding to death
on the kitchen table
of a quack abortionist;
I am with the woman answering
endless questions of
the inquisitive caseworkers;
and I am with the caseworkers,
whose dreams of making a new
social order have long been smothered
in the endless bureaucracy,
the endless forms, the racism of their superiors.

I am with the beauty queen
painting her face and spraying
her hair with poison;
I am with the black prostitute
straightening her hair
and lightening her skin;
I am with the young child
for whom an apron is the only thing
she has been taught to dream of;
I am at the hospital where a
beaten child is being treated for wounds
caused by a mother driven
by desperation past sanity,
past compassion;
I am with the fourty-five-year-old file clerk,
raped and strangled in her one-room walkup.

I am with all women; I am all women,
and our struggle grows

I am with the welfare mothers
who will not be turned away
by the indifferent legislators;
I am with the airline stewardesses
fighting to retain their jobs
after they reach thirty
and their market value has decreased;
I am with the sistah hexing Wall Street
and the bridal fairs and the beauty contests;
I am with women struggling everywhere.

And where there are women too beaten down to fight,
I will be there;
and we will take strength together.
Everywhere: for we will have a new world,
a just world, a world without
oppression and degradation.

The Goddess' Chant from Everywoman
Past, Present, and Future