Moving in Winter

uswritten by Adrienne Rich

Their life, collapsed like unplayed cards,
is carried piecemeal through the snow;
Headboard and footboard now, the bed
where she has lain desiring him
where overhead his sleep will build
its canopy to smother her once more;
their table, by four elbows worn
evening after evening while the wax runs down;
mirrors grey with reflecting them,
bureaus coffining from the cold
things that can shuffle in a drawer,
carpets rolled up around those echoes
which, shaken out, take wing and breed
new altercations, the old silences.



Adrienne Rich

Other poems by Adrienne Rich

For the Record

uswritten by Adrienne Rich, published on Fri 07.09.2010 at 01:44

The clouds and the stars didn't wage this war
the brooks gave no information

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Our Whole Life

uswritten by Adrienne Rich, published on Mon 06.07.2010 at 01:48

Our whole life a translation
the permissible fibs
and now a knot of lies
eating at itself to get undone

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Two Songs

uswritten by Adrienne Rich, published on Mon 04.19.2010 at 15:02

1.
Sex, as they harshly call it,
I fell into this morning
at ten o'clock, a drizzling hour
of traffic and wet newspapers.

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From an Atlas of the Difficult World

uswritten by Adrienne Rich, published on Fri 03.12.2010 at 11:06

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window

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In Those Years

uswritten by Adrienne Rich, published on Sun 01.24.2010 at 09:18

In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I

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Burning Oneself Out

uswritten by Adrienne Rich, published on Fri 12.04.2009 at 11:44

We can look into the stove tonight
as into a mirror, yes,
the serrated log, the yellow-blue gaseous core

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