The dark lintels, the blue and foreign stonesof the great round rippled by stone implementsthe midsummer night light rising form beneaththe horizon—when I said “a cleft of light”I meant this.
And this is not Stonehengesimply nor any place but the mindcasting back to where her solitude,shared, could be chosen without loneliness,not easily nor without pains to stake outthe circle, the heavy shadows, the great light.
I choose to be a figure in that light,half-blotted by darkness, something movingacross that space, the color of stonegreeting the moon, yet more than stone:a woman.
I choose to walk here.
And to draw this circle.
XI is the final poem in 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.
