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

 

• A New Broom by Witt Wittmann by Anglo File
• A Form Of Women by Robert Creely by Anglo File
• A Sonnet Occasioned by the Bad Weather Which Hindered the Sports at New-Market in January, 1616 by William Drummond by Anglo File
• A Little Te Deum Of The Commonplace by John Oxenham by Anglo File
• Telephone Conversation by Wole Soyinka by Anglo File
• I think it rains by Wole Soyinka by Anglo File
• Dedication From Moremi by Wole Soyinka by Anglo File
• As Like The Woman As You Can by William Ernest Henley by William Ernest Henley
• A Thanksgiving by William Ernest Henley by William Ernest Henley
• At Queensferry by William Ernest Henley by William Ernest Henley
• A New Song to an Old Tune by William Ernest Henley by William Ernest Henley
• A Love By The Sea by William Ernest Henley by William Ernest Henley
• A Late Lark Twitters From The Quiet Skies by William Ernest Henley by William Ernest Henley
• A Dainty Thing’s The Villanelle by William Ernest Henley by William Ernest Henley
• Blithe Dreams Arise To Greet Us by William Ernest Henley by William Ernest Henley
• Beside The Idle Summer Sea by William Ernest Henley by William Ernest Henley
• Ballade Of Youth And Age by William Ernest Henley by William Ernest Henley
• Ballade Of Truisms by William Ernest Henley by William Ernest Henley
• Ballade Of A Toyokuni Colour-Print by William Ernest Henley by William Ernest Henley
• Ballade Of Midsummer Days And Nights by William Ernest Henley by William Ernest Henley

 

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