A riff on the riff of Psalm 137, “Super flumina Babylonis” by St. John of Cross

This daughter who repays you, goes home happy.
She dashes your harps against the rocks.
She remembers to hang you,
there on the poplars, as if you were the standard
of some foreign land.
Wild as an ancient city, this woman
seizes all the infants
avenging what you and the others have done.
She glues her tongue to the roof of her mouth
rather than say, Lord, rather than sing
her tormentors’ songs of joy, because even now
her right hand is full of skill.
But she is doomed to destruction. Captors
will tear her down to her foundations
and ask her for a few more songs. “Yes,
tear her down,” you say. “Make her sing
the songs of this tribe, of our tribe.”
When she sits by the river and weeps,
you will be happy—and no better than she.