WHOSE FREEDOM IS IT?

WHOSE FREEDOM IS IT?

I praise the wrath that brands the gaze a thief,

The care that lifts her worth from market's stall,

Yet spurn the claim that bare skin marks the fall

From sacred core right diagnosis, false relief.

We flee one prison, build another brief,

A hierarchy of purity's new thrall

Where men still centre every choice we call,

And freedom kneels to someone else's grief.

A woman naked stays virgin pure in mind;

Another, clothed, lies prostituted deep within.

No outer form reveals the soul's true kind,

The body is the soul made visible, twin

To intellect; she owns both, unconfined.

Conscious, she chooses: neither masters win.