by Adrienne Rich Translations by Adrienne Rich December 25, 1972 You show me the poems of some woman my age, or younger translated from your language Certain words occur: enemy, oven, sorrow enough to let me know she’s a woman of my time obsessed with Love, our subject: we’ve trained it like ivy to our walls baked […]
by Adrienne Rich Song by Adrienne Rich 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 […]
by Christina Davis 1 Because he, because she, in so far as she (in so far as he) exists is on the way to battle. Not what is your name, but what the battle? 2 “Each one of us has come here and changed” — is the battle. Born a loved […]
by Jalal al-Din Rumi What was said to the rose that made it open was said to me here in my chest. What was told the Cypress that made it strong and straight, what was whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made sugarcane sweet, whatever was said to the inhabitants of […]
by Denise Levertov The clouds as I see them, rising urgently, roseate in the mounting of somber power surging in evening haste over roofs and hermetic grim walls— Last night as if death had lit a pale light in your flesh, your flesh was cold to my touch, or not cold but […]
by Mark Doty You weren’t well or really ill yet either; just a little tired, your handsomeness tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace. I didn’t for a moment doubt you were dead. I knew that to be true still, even in the dream. You’d been out–at work […]
by Walt Whitman O me, man of slack faith so long! Standing aloof—denying portions so long; Only aware to-day of compact, all-diffused truth; Discovering to-day there is no lie, or form of lie, and can be none, but grows as inevitably upon itself as the truth does upon itself, Or as any law of the […]
by Walt Whitman When I heard the learn’d astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became […]
by Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick Light, what will remain of my body, talks about You. It keeps saying, learn each other–Today I asked a stranger if she was like me, did she speak into a tape recorder love-notes to herself to keep from diving, driving, into the shale-pain of road. When she answered, Yes– Light, the […]
by Brenda Hillman ~~ & thus you entered a forest of solitudes where in this great sense your life had been pursued, till like a shadow breaking off a rising body, a need hovered & grew. Some lined feature of another fate strives to be met, sits low & upright. Those qualities which had been […]