Home > Work > Collected Early Poems, 1950-1970
1 " PLANETARIUMThinking of Caroline Herschel (1750–1848)astronomer, sister of William; and others.A woman in the shape of a monstera monster in the shape of a womanthe skies are full of thema woman ‘in the snowamong the Clocks and instrumentsor measuring the ground with poles’in her 98 years to discover8 cometsshe whom the moon ruledlike uslevitating into the night skyriding the polished lensesGalaxies of women, theredoing penance for impetuousnessribs chilledin those spaces of the mindAn eye, ‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’ from the mad webs of Uranusborg encountering the NOVAevery impulse of light explodingfrom the coreas life flies out of us Tycho whispering at last ‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’What we see, we seeand seeing is changingthe light that shrivels a mountainand leaves a man aliveHeartbeat of the pulsarheart sweating through my bodyThe radio impulsepouring in from Taurus I am bombarded yet I standI have been standing all my life in thedirect path of a battery of signalsthe most accurately transmitted mostuntranslatable language in the universeI am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-luted that a light wave could take 15years to travel through me And hastaken I am an instrument in the shapeof a woman trying to translate pulsationsinto images for the relief of the bodyand the reconstruction of the mind. "
― Adrienne Rich , Collected Early Poems, 1950-1970
2 " WHAT KIND OF TIMES ARE THESEThere’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphilland the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadowsnear a meeting-house abandoned by the persecutedwho disappeared into those shadows.I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooledthis isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,its own ways of making people disappear.I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woodsmeeting the unmarked strip of light —ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell youanything? Because you still listen, because in times like theseto have you listen at all, it’s necessaryto talk about trees. "
3 " The radio impulsepouring in from TaurusI am bombarded yet I standI have been standing all my life in thedirect path of a battery of signalsthe most accurately transmitted mostuntranslatable language in the universeI am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-luted that a light wave could take 15years to travel through me And hastaken I am an instrument in the shapeof a woman trying to translate pulsationsinto images for the relief of the bodyand the reconstruction of the mind.” ― excerpt from "Planetarium "
4 " There are no angels yethere comes an angel oneshut-off the darkside of the moon turning to meand saying: I am the plumedserpent the beastwith fangs of fire and a gentleheartBut he doesn’t say that His messagedrenches his bodyhe’d want to kill mefor using words to name himI sit in the bare apartmentreadingwords stream past me poetrytwentieth-century riversdisturbed surfaces reflecting cloudsreflecting wrinkled neonbut clogged and mostlynothing alive leftin their depthsThe angel is barelyspeaking to meOnce in a horn of lighthe stood or someone like himsalutations in gold-leafribboning from his lipsToday again the hair streamsto his shouldersthe eyes reflect somethinglike a lost country or so I thinkbut the ribbon has reeled itselfupHe isn’t givingor taking any shitWe glance miserablyacross the room at each otherIt’s true there are momentscloser and closer togetherwhen words stick in my throat‘the art of love’‘the art of words’I get your message Gabrieljust will you stay lookingstraight at meawhile longer "
5 " And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell youanything? Because you still listen, because in times like theseto have you listen at all, it’s necessaryto talk about trees. "
