Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale Excerpt - Pg 111-113 lyrics

"Who is it?" I say to the woman
Next to me into her ear, or
Where her ear must be under the white
Headdress i almost have to shout
The noise is so loud

"Ofwarren, " she shouts back impulsively
She grabs my hand
Squeezes it as we lurch around the corner
She turns to me and I see her face
There are tears running down her cheeks
But tears of what? Envy
Disappointment? But no, she's
Laughing, she throws her arms around me
I've never seen her before, she hugs me, she
Has large breasts, under the red habit
She wipes her sleeve across her face on this
Day we can do anything we want

I revise that: within limit's

Across from us on the other bench
One woman is praying, eyes closed
Hands up to her mouth or
She may not be praying she may be biting her
Thumbnails possibly she's trying
To keep calm the third woman is calm
Already, she sit's with her arms folded
Smiling a
Little the siren goes on and on that
Used to be the sound of death
For ambulances or fires possibly
It will be the
Sound of death today also we will soon know
What will Ofwarren give birth to? A baby, as
We all hope? Or something else, an Unbaby
With a pinhead or a snout like a dog's
Or two
Bodies, or a hole in it's heart or no arms
Or webbed hands and feet?
There's no telling they
Could tell once, with machines
But that is now
Outlawed what would be the point of knowing
Anyway? You can't have them
Taken out whatever
It is must be carried to term

The chances are one in four
We learned that at the Center
The air got too full, once
Of chemicals, rays, radiation
The water swarmed with toxic molecules
All of that takes years
To clean up, and meanwhile they
Creep into your body, camp out in your fatty
Cells who knows, your very flesh may be
Polluted, dirty as an oily beach
Sure death to shore birds and
Unborn babies maybe a
Vulture would die of eating you maybe
You light up in the
Dark, like an old-fashioned watch deathwatch
That's a kind of beetle, it buries carrion

I can't think of myself, my body, sometimes
Without seeing the skeleton:
How I must appear to an
Electron a cradle of life, made
Of bones and within
Hazards, warped proteins
Bad crystals jagged as glass
Women took medicines, pills, men sprayed
Trees, cows ate grass
All that souped-up piss flowed into
The rivers not to mention the
Exploding atomic power plants, along
The San Andreas fault, nobody's
Fault, during the earthquakes
And the mutant strain of syphilis
No mold could touch some did it themselves
Had themselves tied shut with
Catgut or scarred with chemicals how
Could they said Aunt Lydia
Oh how could they have done such a thing?
Jezebels! Scorning God's gifts!
Wringing her hands
It's a risk you're taking, said Aunt Lydia
But you are the shock troops
You will march out in advance
Into dangerous territory the greater the risk
The greater the glory she clasped her hands
Radiant with our phony courage we
Looked down at the tops
Of our desks to go through all
That and give birth to
A shredder: it wasn't a fine
Thought we didn't know exactly
What would happen to the babies
That didn't get passed, that were
Declared Unbabies but we knew they
Were put somewhere, quickly, away