From An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991, by Adrienne Rich

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
                      up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and umeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
                     between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
                     left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

Adrienne Rich
1990-1991

Adrienne Rich has been a great inspiration to me ever since I first discovered her in high school. Even before I came to embrace my own feminism and radical nature, her work evoked those deep-seated beliefs I'd held since childhood--held and been shamed out of. Later, I wrote my B.A. thesis at Vassar about her, exploring her own journey from a conventional wife and mother to radical lesbian.

The poem "Orion" has always spoken to me because of the way it evokes that connection with the strange and powerful force of creativity. The part of a poet that forces her to write is not reasonable, not sane. It is like a myth or a constellation. The constellation of Orion as a symbol of this force is particularly apt because it rises in wintertime, when the life force that can aid in creativity is deep and buried. And yet the burning remains.

The impulse to write, to create, burns even when we don't want it to. It burns in spite of all the other demands on a poet's time and energy--especially a woman who is a wife and mother. In order to be an artist, one must "break faith," find some way to keep others from eating the crumbs of one's life. An artist must be cold and egotistical, must create the space necessary to produce her work. In a society that encourages women to nurture, not to create, the act of writing, of creating, becomes an act of gender rebellion.

Orion

Far back when I went zig-zagging
through tamarack pastures
you were my genius, you
my cast-iron Viking, my helmed
lion-heart king in prison.
Years later now you're young

my fierce half-brother, staring
down from that simplified west
your breast open, your belt dragged down
by an oldfashioned thing, a sword
the last bravado you won't give over
though it weighs you down as you stride

and the stars in it are dim
and maybe have stopped burning.
But you burn, and I know it;
as I throw back my head to take you in
an old transfusion happens again:
divine astronomy is nothing to it.

Indoors I bruise and blunder,
break faith, leave ill enough
alone, a dead child born in the dark.
Night cracks up over the chimney,
pieces of time, frozen geodes
come showering down in the grate.

A man reaches behind my eyes
and finds them empty
a woman's head turns away
from my head in the mirror
children are dying my death
and eating crumbs of my life

Pity is not your forte
Calmly you ache up there
pinned aloft in your crow's nest,
my speechless pirate!
You take it all for granted
and when I look you back

it's with a starlike eye
shooting its cold and egotistical spear
where it can do the least damage.
Breathe deep! No hurt, no pardon
out here in the cold with you
you with your back to the wall.
it's with a starlike eye
shooting its cold and egotistical spear
when it can do the least damage.
Breathe deep! No hurt, no pardon
out here in the cold with you
you with your back to the wall

1965
Adrienne Rich
From Leaflets, 1969
Reprinted in The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984. Rich, Adrienne. Norton. New York: 1984.