Your Native Land, Your Life by Adrienne Rich

Author:Adrienne Rich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

What Was, Is;

What Might Have Been, Might Be

What’s kept. What’s lost. A snap decision.

Burn the archives. Let them rot.

Begin by going ten years back.

A woman walks downstairs in a brownstone

in Brooklyn. Late that night, some other night

snow crystals swarm in her hair

at the place we say, So long.

I’ve lost something. I’m not sure what it is.

I’m going through my files.

Jewel-weed flashing

blue fire against an iron fence

Her head bent to a mailbox

long fingers ringed in gold in red-eyed

golden serpents

the autumn sun

burns like a beak off the cars

parked along Riverside we so deep in talk

in burnt September grass

I’m trying for exactitude

in the files I handle worn and faded labels

And how she drove, and danced, and fought, and worked

and loved, and sang, and hated

dashed into the record store then out

with the Stevie Wonder back in the car

flew on

Worn and faded labels . . . This was

our glamor for each other

underlined in bravado

Could it have been another way:

could we have been respectful comrades

parallel warriors none of that

fast-falling

could we have kept a clean

and decent slate

1984

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