Every peak is a crater.
This is the law of volcanoes,making them eternally and visibly female.
No height without depth, without a burning core,though our straw soles shred on the hardened lava.
I want to travel with you to every sacred mountainsmoking within like the sibyl stooped over his tripod,
I want to reach for your hand as we scale the path,to feel your arteries glowing in my clasp,never failing to note the small, jewel-like flowerunfamiliar to us, nameless till we rename her,that clings to the slowly altering rock—that detail outside ourselves that brings us to ourselves,was here before us, knew we would come, and sees beyond us. This is poem XI, 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.
