wednesday, april 24th, 2024 // #37
When my dreams showed signs
when walking in the street I found my
knew what I would not report
for fear of enemies’ usage
or against those we love.
Poetry never stood a chance
of standing outside history.
One line typed twenty years ago
can be blazed on a wall in spraypaint
to glorify art as detachment
We move but our words stand
for more than we intended
and this is verbal privilege
Try sitting at a typewriter
in the country, try pretending
that the imagination simply strays
like a great moth, unintentional
to the life of your tribe
the breath of your planet
It doesn’t matter what you think.
Words are found responsible
all you can do is choose them
to remain silent. Or, you never had a choice,
which is why the words that do stand
and this is verbal privilege
Suppose you want to write
straight down, or with beads and shells
in three-strand plaits or corn-rows—
you had better know the thickness
why she decides to braid her hair
what country it happens in
what else happens in that country
You have to know these things
whether we like it or not—
stand in a time of their own.
no use protesting I wrote that
before Kollontai was exiled
Rosa Luxembourg, Malcolm,
Anna Mae Aquash, murdered,
before Treblinka, Birkenau,
Hiroshima, before Sharpeville,
Biafra, Bangladesh, Boston,
Atlanta, Soweto, Beirut, Assam
—those faces, names of places
I am thinking this in a country
where words are stolen out of mouths
as bread is stolen out of mouths
where poets don’t go to jail
for being poets, but for being
dark-skinned, female, poor.
I am writing this in a time
can be used against those we love
where the context is never given
though we try to explain, over and over
For the sake of poetry at least
I need to know these things"
Rich, Adrienne. "North American Time". Adrienne Rich’s Poetry and Prose: A Norton Critical Edition. Edited by Albert Gelpi and Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi, New York, Norton, 1993, p. 114-117.
