Twenty-One Love Poems XVI

Across a city from you,

I’m with you,just as an August nightmoony, inlet-warm, seabathed,

I watched you sleep,the scrubbed, sheenless wood of the dressing-tablecluttered with our brushes, books, vials in the moonlight—or a salt-mist orchard, lying at your sidewatching red sunset through the screendoor of the cabin,

G minor Mozart on the tape-recorder,falling asleep to the music of the sea.

This island of Manhattan is wide enoughfor both of us, and narrow:

I can hear your breath tonight,

I know how your facelies upturned, the halflight tracingyour generous, delicate mouthwhere grief and laughter sleep together.               This is poem

VI, from Adrienne Rich's Twenty-One Love Poems collection, written between 1974-1976.  These were originally published as a complete collection but were later re-published and included as part of another collection of works, written between 1974-1977, called The Dream Of A Common Language.

Twenty-One Love Poems and The Floating Poem, (un-numbered) can all be found here at oldpoetry.