mercifulserpent

From an Atlas of the Difficult World
Adrienne Rich


I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

 

Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev (leader of a woman's climbing team, all of whom died in a storm on Lenin Peak, August 1974. Later, Shatayev's husband found and buried the bodies.) The cold felt cold until our blood grew colder      then the wind died down and we slept If in this sleep I speak it's with a voice no longer personal (I want to say      with voices) When the wind tore      our breath from us at last we had no need of words For months      for years      each one of us had felt her own yes      growing in her slowly forming      as she stood at windows      waited for trains      mended her rucksack      combed her hair What we were to learn      was simply      what we had up here      as out of all words      that yes      gathered its forces      fused itself      and only just in time to meet a No of no degrees the black hole      sucking the world in I feel you climbing toward me your cleated bootsoles leaving      their geometric bite colossally embossed      on microscopic crystals as when I trailed you in the Caucasus Now I am further ahead      than either of us dreamed      anyone would be I have become the white snow packed like asphalt by the wind the women I love      lightly flung      against the mountain that blue sky our frozen eyes unribboned      through the storm we could have stitched that blueness      together      like a quilt You come (I know this)      with your love      your loss strapped to your body      with your tape-recorder      camera ice-pick      against advisement to give us burial in the snow      and in your mind While my body lies out here flashing like a prism      into your eyes how could you sleep      You climbed here for yourself we climbed for ourselves When you have buried us      told your story Ours does not end      we stream into the unfinished      the unbegun the possible Every cell's core of heat      pulsed out of us into the thin air      of the universe the armature of rock beneath these snows this mountain      which has taken      the imprint of our minds through changes elemental and minute as those we underwent to bring each other here choosing ourselves      each other      and this life whose every breath      and grasp      and further foothold is somewhere      still enacted      and continuing In the diary I wrote: Now we are ready and each of us knows it      I have never loved like this      I have never seen my own forces so taken up and shared and given back After the long training      the early sieges we are moving almost effortlessly in our love In the diary as the wind      began to tear at the tents over us      I wrote: We know now we have always been in danger down in our separateness and now up here together      but till now we had not touched our strength In the diary torn from my fingers I had written: What does love mean what does it mean      "to survive" A cable of blue fire ropes our bodies burning together in the snow      We will not live to settle for less      We have dreamed of this all of our lives -Adrienne Rich

SONG

You're wondering if I'm lonely:
OK then, yes, I'm lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I'm lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawn's first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I'm lonely
it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it's neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning