Twenty-One Love Poems IV

VI come home from you through the early light of springflashing off ordinary walls, the Pez Dorado,the Discount Wares, the shoe-store… I’m lugging my sackof groceries,

I dash for the elevatorwhere a man, taut, elderly, carefully composedlets the door almost close on me.—For god’s sake hold it!

I croak at him.—Hysterical,--he breathes my way.

I let myself into the kitchen, unload my bundles,make coffee, open the window, put on Nina Simonesinging Here comes the sun… I open the mail,drinking delicious coffee, delicious music,my body still both light and heavy with you.

The maillets fall a Xerox of something written by a managed 27, a hostage, tortured in prison:

My genitals have been the object of such a sadistic displaythey keep me constantly awake with the pain…Do whatever you can to survive.

You know,

I think that men love wars…And my incurable anger, my unmendable woundsbreak open further with tears,

I am crying helplessly,and they still control the world, and you are not in my arms.          This is poem IV, 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.