Sleeping, turning in turn like planetsrotating in their midnight meadow:a touch is enough to let us knowwe’re not alone in the universe, even in sleep:the dream-ghosts of two worldswalking their ghost-towns, almost address each other.
I’ve wakened to your muttered wordsspoken light-or dark-years awayas if my own voice had spoken.
But we have different voices, even in sleep,and our bodies, so alike, are yet so differentand the past echoing through our bloodstreamsis freighted with different language, different meanings—though in any chronicle of the world we shareit could be written with new meaningwe were two lovers of one gender,we were two women of one generation. This is poem
II, 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.
