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 Leaders Of The Crowd by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Lamentation Of The Old Pensioner by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Lake Isle Of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Lady’s Third Song by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Lady’s Second Song by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Lady’s First Song by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Indian Upon God by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Indian To His Love by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Hour Before Dawn by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• To A Child Dancing In The Wind by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• Three Songs To The One Burden by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• These Are The Clouds by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Withering Of The Boughs by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Wheel by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Wanderings of Oisin: Book II by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Wanderings of Oisin: Book I by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Travail Of Passion by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Three Monuments by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Three Beggars by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Statues by William Butler Yeats by William Butler Yeats

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Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.

Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees

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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