THIS IS MY THIRD AND LAST ADDRESS TO YOU
by Adrienne Rich
Page 2
III.
Strangers are an endangered speciesIn Emily Dickinson's house in Amherst
cocktails are served the scholars
gather in celebration
their pious or clinical legends
festoon the walls like imitations
of period patterns(...and, as I feared, my "life" was made a "victim")
The remnants pawed the relics
the cult assembled in the bedroom
and you whose teeth were set on edge by churches
resist your shrine
escape
are found
nowhere
unless in words
(your own)All we are strangers--dear--The world is not
acquainted with us, because we are not acquainted
with her. And Pilgrims!--Do you hesitate? and
Soldiers oft--some of us victors, but those I do
not see tonight owing to the smoke.--We are hungry,
and thirsty, sometimes--We are barefoot--and cold--This place is large enough for both of us
the river-fog will do for privacy
this is my third and last address to youwith the hands of a daughter I would cover you
from all intrusion even my own
saying rest to your ghostwith the hands of a sister I would leave your hands
open or closed as they prefer to lie
and ask no more of who or why or whereforewith the hands of a mother I would close the door
on the rooms you've left behind
and silently pick up my fallen workIV.
The river-fog will do for privacy
on the low road a breath
here, there, a cloudiness floating on the black topsunflower heads turned black and bowed
the seas of corn a stubble
the old routes flowing north, if not to freedomno human figure now in sight
(with whom do you believe your lot is cast?)
only the functional figure of the scarecrowthe cut corn, ground to shreds, heaped in a shape
like an Indian burial mound
a haunted-looking, ordinary thingThe work of winter starts fermenting in my head
how with the hands of a lover or a midwife
to hold back till the time is rightforce nothing, be unforced
accept no giant miracles of growth
by counterfeit lighttrust roots, allow the days to shrink
give credence to these slender means
wait without sadness and with grave impatiencehere in the north where winter has a meaning
where the heaped colors suddenly go ashen
where nothing is promisedlearn what an underground journey
has been, might have to be; speak in a winter code
let fog, sleet, translate; wind, carry them.V.
Orion plunges like a drunken hunter
over the Mohawk Trail a parallelogram
slashed with two cuts of steelA night so clear that every constellation
stands out from an undifferentiated cloud
of stars, a kind of auraAll the figures up there look violent to me
as a pogrom on Christmas Eve in some old country
I want our own earth not the satellites, ourworld as it is if not as it might be
then as it is: male dominion,gangrape,lynching,pogrom
the Mohawk wraiths in their tracts of leafless birchwatching: will we do better?
The tests I need to pass are prescribed by the spirits
of place who understand travel but not amnesiaThe world as it is: not as her users boast
damaged beyond reclamation by their using
Ourselves as we are in these painful motionsof staying cognizant: some part of us always
out beyond ourselves
knowing knowing knowingAre we all in training for something we don't name?
to exact reparation for things
done long ago to us and to those who did notsurvive what was done to them whom we ought to honor
with grief with fury with action
On a pure night on a night when pollutionseems absurdity when the undamaged planet seems to turn
like a bowl of crystal in black ether
they are the piece of us that lies out there
knowing knowing knowing
