Poet #5: Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich: her work is balm to the feminist heart.

"Nothing can be done
but by inches. I write out my life
hour by hour, word by word
gazing into the anger of old women on the bus
numbering the striations
of air inside the ice cube
imagining the existence
of something uncreated
this poem
our lives"

"It is strange to be so many women,
eating and drinking at the same table,
those who bathed their children in the same basin
who kept their secrets from each other
walked the floors of their lives in separate rooms
and flow into history now as the woman of their time
living in the prime of life
as in a city where nothing is forbidden
and nothing permanent."

"I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer"