Victory

A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)

 

Something spreading underground won’t speak to us

under skin won’t declare itself

not all life-forms want dialogue with the

machine-gods in their drama hogging down

the deep bush clear-cutting refugees

from ancient or transient villages into

our opportunistic fervor to search

crazily for a host a lifeboat

 

Suddenly instead of art we’re eyeing

organisms traced and stained on cathedral transparencies

cruel blues embroidered purples succinct yellows

a beautiful tumor

 

•

 

I guess you’re not alone I fear you’re alone

There’s, of course, poetry:

awful bridge rising over naked air: I first

took it as just a continuation of the road:

“a masterpiece of engineering

praised, etc.” then on the radio:

“incline too steep for ease of, etc.”

Drove it nonetheless because I had to

this being how— So this is how

I find you: alive and more

 

•

 

As if (how many conditionals must we suffer?)

I’m driving to your side

—an intimate collusion—

packed in the trunk my bag of foils for fencing with pain

glasses of varying spectrum for sun or fog or sun-struck

rain or bitterest night my sack of hidden

poetries, old glue shredding from their spines

 

my time exposure of the Leonids

over Joshua Tree

 

As if we’re going to win this O because

 

•

 

If you have a sister I am not she

nor your mother nor you my daughter

nor are we lovers or any kind of couple

except in the intensive care

of poetry and

death’s master plan architecture-in-progress

draft elevations of a black-and-white mosaic dome

the master left on your doorstep

with a white card in black calligraphy:

Make what you will of this

As if leaving purple roses

 

•

 

If (how many conditionals must we suffer?)

I tell you a letter from the master

is lying on my own doorstep

glued there with leaves and rain

and I haven’t bent to it yet

if I tell you I surmise

he writes differently to me:

 

Do as you will, you have had your life

many have not

 

signing it in his olden script:

 

Meister aus Deutschland

 

•

 

In coldest Europe end of that war

frozen domes iron railings frozen stoves lit in the

streets

memory banks of cold

 

the Nike of Samothrace

on a staircase wings in blazing

backdraft said to me

: : to everyone she met

Displaced, amputated never discount me

 

Victory

indented in disaster striding

at the head of stairs

 

for Tory Dent

 

 

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Poems in English

 

• The Poor House by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The Old Maid by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The Nights Remember by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The New Moon by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The Net by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The Mother Of A Poet by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The Metropolitan Tower by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The Meeting by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The Love That Goes A-Begging by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The Look by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The Long Hill by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The Lights Of New York by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The Lighted Window by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The Lamp by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The Kiss by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The Kind Moon by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The Inn Of Earth by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The India Wharf by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
• The House Of Dreams by Sara Teasdale by Sara Teasdale
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