Valediction Forbidding Mourning

A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)

My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.

The grammar turned and attacked me.

Themes, written under duress.

Emptiness of the notations.

They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.

I want you to see this before I leave:

the experience of repetition as death

the failure of criticism to locate the pain

the poster in the bus that said:

my bleeding is under control

A red plant in a cemetary of plastic wreaths.

A last attempt: the language is a dialect called metaphor.

These images go unglossed: hair, glacier, flashlight.

When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time.

When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.

I could say: those mountains have a meaning

but further than that I could not say.

To do something very common, in my own way.

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Poems in English 

• The Instructor by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Hyaenas by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Houses by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Heritage by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Greek National Anthem by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Grave of the Hundered Head by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Gipsy Trail by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Gift of the Sea by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Galley-Slave by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Floods by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Flight by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The First Chantey by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Fires by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Female of the Species by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Fall of Jock Gillespie by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Fairies’ Siege by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Fabulists by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Explorer by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
• The Explanation by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling

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Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.

Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.

 

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