Waking in the Dark
-Adrienne Rich

 

1.

 

The thing that arrests me is

 

      how we are composed of molecules

 

      (he showed me the figure in the paving stones)

 

      arranged without our knowledge and consent

 

                like the wirephoto composed

 

                of millions of dots

 

 

 

                in which the man from Bangladesh

 

                walks starving

 

                                     on the front page

 

                                     knowing nothing about it

 

                which is his presence for the world

 

 

2.

 

We are standing in line outside of something

 

two by two, or alone in pairs, or simply alone

 

looking into windows full of scissors,

 

windows full of shoes. The street was closing,

 

the city was closing, would we be the lucky ones

 

to make it? They were showing

 

in a glass case, the Man Without a Country.

 

We held up our passports in his face, we wept for him.

 

  

They are dumping animal blood into the sea

 

to bring up the sharks. Sometimes every

 

aperture of my body

 

leaks blood. I don’t know whether

 

to pretend that this is natural.

 

Is there a law about this, a law of nature?

 

You worship the blood

 

you call it hysterical bleeding

 

you want to drink it like milk

 

you dip your finger into it and you write

 

you faint at the smell of it

 

you dream of dumping me into the sea.

 

 

3.

 

The tragedy of sex

 

lies around us, a woodlot

 

the axes are sharpened for.

 

The old shelters and huts

 

stare through the clearing with a certain resolution

 

- the hermit’s cabin, the hunters’ shack –

 

scenes of masturbation

 

and dirty jokes.

 

A man’s world. But finished.

 

They themselves have sold it to the machines.

 

I walk the unconcious forest,

 

A woman dressed in old army fatigues

 

that have shrunk to fit her, I am lost

 

at moments, I feel dazed

 

by the sun pawing between the trees,

 

cold in the bog and lichen of the ticket.

 

Nothing will save this. I am alone,

 

kicking the last totting logs

 

with their strange smell of life, not death,

 

wondering what on earth it all might have become.

 

 

4.

 Clarity,

 

 

 

                 spray

 

 

 

blinding and purging

 

 

 

spears of sun striking the water

 

 

 

the bodies riding the air

 

 

 

like gliders

 

 

 

the bodies in slow motion

 

 

 

falling

 

into the pool

 

at the Berlin Olympics

 

 

 

control; loss of control

 

 

 

the bodies rising

 

arching back to the tower

 

time reeling backward

 

 

 

clarity of open air

 

before the dark chambers

 

with the shower-heads

 

 

 

the bodies falling again

 

freely

 

 

 

                              faster than light

 

the water opening

 

like air

 

like realization

 

 

 

A woman made this film

 

against

 

 

 

the law

 

of gravity

 

 

 

5.

 

All night dreaming of a body

 

space weighs on differently from mine

 

We are making love in the street

 

the traffic flows off from us

 

pouring back like a sheet

 

the asphalt stirs with tenderness

 

there is no dismay

 

we move together like underwater plants

 

 

 

Over and over, starting to wake

I dive back to discover you

still whispering, touch me, we go on

streaming through the slow

citylight forest ocean

stirring our body hair

 

 

 

But this is the saying of a dream

on waking

I wish there were somewhere

actual we could stand

handing the power-glasses back and forth

looking at the earth, the wildwood

where the split began.