POEMS FOR ADRIENNE RICH (II)

POEMS FOR ADRIENNE RICH (II)

POEMS FOR ADRIENNE RICH (II)

Reading your poems makes me want to
make again. Something stirs in me
that is no longer man-root,
no longer the male imperative
that drove you and your sisters
under the skin up the wall
down which courses the wailing
and weeping of a myriad women.
Survival of wits is hard come-by
in this world of warring families.
We know there are too many people
here including ourselves and that each
appears to have the right to be so.
Ah love what is your true form,
your true self among five billion selves?
As you and I age (we were born
a year apart) I pray your health
holds together. Mine has collapsed
from the congenital start.
And yet I lived to write and love a lot.
Not with your fiery vision of words,
your smoky camouflaging of pain.
And such anger held in barest
check. Dear God forgive the males
who ploughed your sensibilities
like an open field, sowing rocks.
And the women — the later lovers
who didn’t quite rise to your
occasions (I tend to think in cliches
now I am only half alive). I didn’t mean
to obtrude in this your poem. But
we are quite personal in what we write
and the world may eventually be
a tiny bit the better for our speaking
out of ourselves.