Orion

A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)

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

and 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 least damage.

Breath deep! No hurt, no pardon

out here in the cold with you

you with your back to the wall.

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• Warm are the Still and Lucky Miles by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Voltaire At Ferney by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Underneath an Abject Willow by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• This Lunar Beauty by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• They Wondered Why the Fruit had Been Forbidden by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Waters by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Wanderer by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Two by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Riddle by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Quest by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Quest XII (Vocation) by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Novelist by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Labyrinth by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Hidden Law by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Geography of the House by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Dream by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Common Life by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Thanksgiving for a Habitat by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Taller To-day by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Song Of The Master And Boatswain by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)

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