Effort at Speech Between Two People
by Muriel Rukeyser
: Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now? I will tell you all. I will conceal nothing. When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair : a pink rabbit : it was my birthday, and a candle burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be happy. : Oh, grow to know me. I am not happy. I will be open: Now I am thinking of sails against a sky like music, like glad horns blowing, and birds tilting, and an arm about me. There was one I loved, who wanted to live, sailing. : Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now? When I was nine, I was fruitily sentimental, fluid : and my widowed aunt played Chopin, and I bent my head on the painted woodwork, and wept. I want now to be close to you. I would link the minutes of my days close, somehow, to your days. : I am not happy. I will be open. I have liked lamps in evening corners, and quiet poems. There has been fear in my life. Sometimes I speculate On what a tragedy their life was, really. : Take my hand. Fist my mind in your hand. What are you now? When I was fourteen, I had dreams of suicide, and I stood at a steep window, at sunset, hoping toward death : if the light had not melted clouds and plains to beauty, if light had not transformed that day, I would have leapt. I am unhappy. I am lonely. Speak to me. : I will be open. I think they never loved me: they loved the bright beaches, the little lips of foam that ride small waves, they loved the veer of gulls: they said with a gay mouth: I love you. Grow to know me. : What are you now? If we could touch one another, if these our separate entities could come to grips, clenched like a Chinese puzzle . . . yesterday I stood in a crowded street that was live with people, and no one spoke a word, and the morning shone.
Everyone silent, moving. . . . Take my hand. Speak to me.
(via Muriel Rukeyser, “Effort at Speech Between Two People” from The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser. )