"I refuse to become a seeker for cures
Everything that has ever
helped me has come through what already
lay stored in me. Old things, diffuse, unnamed, lie strong
across my heart.
This is from where
my strength comes, even when I miss my strength
even when it turns on me
like a violent master."
- from "Sources" by Adrienne Rich

"Even where love has run thin
the child's soul musters strength
calling on dust motes song on the radio
closet-floor of galoshes
stray cat piles of autumn leaves
whatever comes along
- the rush of purpose to make a life
worth living past abandoment
building the layers up again
over the torn hole filling in

...

The child's soul carries on
in the wake of home
building a complicated house
a tree-house without a tree
finding places for everything
the song the stray cat the skeleton
The child's soul musters strength
where the holes were torn
but there are no miracles:
even children become exhausted.
And how shall they comfort each other
who have come young to grief?
Who will number the grains of loss
and what would comfort be?"

- from "In the Wake of Home" by Adrienne Rich



"Look: this is January the worst onslaught
is ahead of us Don't be lured
by these soft grey afternoons these sunsets cut
from pink and violet tissue paper by the thought
that days are lengthening
Don't let the solstice fool you:
our lives will always be
a stew of contradictions
the worst moment of winter can come in April
when the peepers are stubbornly still and out bodies
plod on without conviction
and our thoughts cramp down before the sheer
arsenal of everything that tries us:
this battering, blunt-edged life

...

Trapped in one idea, you can't have your feelings,
feelings are always about more than one thing.
You drag yourself bach home and its autumn
you can't concentrate, you can't lie on the couch
so you drive for hours on the quiet roads
crying at the wheel watching the colors
deepening, fading and winter is coming
and you long for one idea
one simple, huge idea to take this weight
and you know you will never find it, never
because you don't want to find it
You will drive and cry and come home and eat
and listen to the news
and slowly even at the winter's edge
the feelings come back in their shapes
and colors conflicting they come back
they are changed

...


If to feel is to be unreliable
don't listen to us
if to be in pain is to be predictable
embittered bullying
then don't listen to us
If we're in danger of mistaking
our personal trouble for the pain on the streets
don't listen to us
If my fury at being grounded frightens you
take off your racing skis
in your beautiful masks
Trapped in one idea, you can't have feelings
Without feelings, perhaps you can feel like a god

...

the body's pain and the pain on the streets
are not the same but you can learn
from the edges that blur O you who love clear edges
more than anything watch the edges that blur"

- from "Contradictions: Tracking Poems" by Adrienne Rich