Muriel Rukeyser, “The Poem as Mask”

Orpheus When I wrote of the women in their dances and wildness, it was a mask, on their mountain, god-hunting, singing, in orgy, it was a mask; when I wrote of the god, fragmented, exiled from himself, his life, the love gone down with song, it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from myself.