Some days are Adrienne Rich days, and there's just nothing you can do
about it except post some Adrienne Rich. I usually love her poetry, so
this is not a hardship.
(I have more mixed feelings about her
politics, which were sometimes phenomenally feminist and groundbreaking
and wonderful, and sometimes deeply problematic and transphobic; but if I
stopped loving poets because I disagreed with some of their politics I
would be super screwed when it comes to most poetry. It is, as always—at
least, I think so—very much worth being aware of the nuance and
complexity and occasional awfulness of people and their ideas; but that
doesn't mean you can't love some (or even a lot) of what they have to
say, even while you hate some of the other things they have to say. Loving problematic things.)
If I've reached for your lines (I have)
like letters from the dead that stir the nerves
dowsed you for a springhead
to water my thirst
dug into my compost skeleton and petals
you surely meant to catch the light:
—at work in my wormeaten wormwood-raftered
stateless underground
have I a plea?
If I've touched your finger
with a ravenous tongue
licked from your palm a rift of salt
if I've dreamt or thought you
a pack of blood fresh-drawn
hanging darkred from a hook
higher than my heart
(you who understand transfusion)
where else should I appeal?
A pilot light lies low
while the gas jets sleep
(a cat getting toed from stove
into nocturnal ice)
language uncommon and agile as truth
melts down the most intractable silence
A lighthouse keeper's ethics:
you tend for all or none
for this you might set your furniture on fire
A this we have blundered over
as if the lamp could be shut off at will
rescue denied for some
and still a lighthouse be
—Adrienne Rich (1929-2012), "For This" from Fox, 1999.
In
not entirely unrelated news, I have been feeling exceptionally lucky in
my friends and chosen family, this week. You guys are great, you know
that?
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