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

 

• Poem of Joys. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Proud Music of The Storm by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Here, Sailor. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• I Dream’d in a Dream. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Turn, O Libertad. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• A Clear Midnight. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Are You the New person, drawn toward Me? by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Ah Poverties, Wincings and Sulky Retreats. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Soledad by Robert Hayden by Walt Whitman
• Runagate Runagate by Robert Hayden by Walt Whitman
• Perseus by Robert Hayden by Walt Whitman
• O Daedalus, Fly Away Home by Robert Hayden by Walt Whitman
• Among the Multitude. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• American Feuillage. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• An Army Corps on the March. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• All is Truth. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• A Carol of Harvest, for 1867 by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• A Promise to California. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• After the Sea-Ship. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• A Boston Ballad, 1854. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman

 

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