Shattered Head

A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)

A life hauls itself uphill

through hoar-mist steaming

the sun’s tongue licking

leaf upon leaf into stricken liquid

When? When? cry the soothseekers

but time is a bloodshot eye

seeing its last of beauty its own

foreclosure

a bloodshot mind

finding itself unspeakable

What is the last thought?

Now I will let you know?

or, Now I know?

(porridge of skull-splinters, brain tissue

mouth and throat membrane, cranial fluid)

Shattered head on the breast

of a wooded hill

Laid down there endlessly so

tendrils soaked into matted compose

became a root

torqued over the faint springhead

groin whence illegible

matter leaches: worm-borings, spurts of silt

volumes of sporic changes

hair long blown into far follicles

blasted into a chosen place

Revenge on the head (genitals, breast, untouched)

revenge on the mouth

packed with its inarticulate confessions

revenge on the eyes

green-gray and restless

revenge on the big and searching lips

the tender tongue

revenge on the sensual, on the nose the

carrier of history

revenge on the life devoured

in another incineration

You can walk by such a place, the earth is

made of them

where the stretched tissue of a field or woods

is humid

with beloved matter

the soothseekers have withdrawn

you feel no ghost, only a sporic chorus

when that place utters its worn sigh

let us have peace

And the shattered head answers back

And I believed I was loved, I believed I loved

Who did this to us?

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Poems in English 

• From Milton: And did those feet by William Blake by William Blake
• Blind Man’s Buff by William Blake by William Blake
• XVI: Some Verses: Of Conquerouris by William Alexander by William Alexander
• XV: Some Verses: Ciprian’s Smyling by William Alexander by William Alexander
• XIV: Some Verses: To Mr. Edward Allane by William Alexander by William Alexander
• XIII: Some Verses: On A Report On The Death Of The Author by William Alexander by William Alexander
• A Slumber did my Spirit Seal by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Sketch by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Poet’s Epitaph by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Poet! He Hath Put His Heart To School by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Parsonage In Oxfordshire by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Morning Exercise by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Jewish Family In A Small Valley Opposite St. Goar, Upon The Rhine by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Gravestone Upon The Floor In The Cloisters Of Worcester Cathedral by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Fact, And An Imagination, Or, Canute And Alfred, On The Seashore by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Complaint by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• XII: Some Verses: Sonnet, To The Authour by William Alexander by William Alexander
• XI: Some Verses: To His Worthy Friend Master Walter Quin by William Alexander by William Alexander
• X: Some Verses: To His Most Affectionate Friend Mr. Lithgow by William Alexander by William Alexander
• VII: Some Verses: On The Death of John Murray by William Alexander by William Alexander

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