It was simple to meet you

It was simple to meet you, simple to take your eyes
into mine, saying: these are eyes I have known
from the first....It was simple to touch you
against the hacked background, the grain of what we
had been, the choices, years....It was even simple
to take each other's lives in our hands, as bodies.

What is not simple: to wake from drowning
from where the ocean beat inside us like an afterbirth
into this common, acute particularity
these two selves who walked half a lifetime untouching -
to wake to something deceptively simple: a glass
sweated with dew, a ring of the telephone, a scream
of someone beaten up far down the street
causing each of us to listen to her own inward scream [8]

from 'Origins and History of Consciousness'


I believe I am choosing something new
not to suffer uselessly       yet still to feel
Does the infant memorize the body of the mother
and create her in absence?       or simply cry
primordial loneliness?       does the bed of the stream
once diverted       mourning       remember wetness? [10]

from 'Splittings'

Rich, Adrienne. The Dream of a Common Language: Poems, 1974-1977. W.W. Norton, 1978. ISBN: 0393045021.

recommended by Stefanie