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greenstormLeaflets
5.
The strain of being born
over and over has torn your smile into pieces
Often I have seen it broken
and then re-membered
and wondered how a beauty
so anarch, so ungelded
will be cared for in this world.
I want to hand you this
leaflet streaming with rain or tears
but the words coming clear
something you might find crushed into your hand
after passing a barricade
and stuff into your raincoat pocket.
I want this to reach you
who told me once that poetry is nothing sacred
---no more sacred that is
than other things in life---
to answer yes, if life is uncorrupted
no better poetry is wanted.
I want this to be yours
in the sense that if you find and read it
it will be there in you already
and the leaflet then merely something
to leave behind, a little leaf
in the drawer of a sublet room.
What else does it come down to
but handing on scraps of paper
little figurines or phials
no stronger than the dry clay they are baked in
yet more than dry clay or paper
because the imagination crouches in them.
If we needed fire to remind us
that all true images
were scooped out of the mud
where our bodies curse and flounder
then perhaps that fire is coming
to sponge away the scribes and time-servers
and much that you would have loved will be lost as well
before you could handle it and know it
just as we almost miss each other
in the ill cloud of mistrust, who might have touched
hands quickly, shared food or given blood
for each other. I am thinking how we can use what we have
to invent what we need.
- adrienne rich, from 'Leaflets'
5.
The strain of being born
over and over has torn your smile into pieces
Often I have seen it broken
and then re-membered
and wondered how a beauty
so anarch, so ungelded
will be cared for in this world.
I want to hand you this
leaflet streaming with rain or tears
but the words coming clear
something you might find crushed into your hand
after passing a barricade
and stuff into your raincoat pocket.
I want this to reach you
who told me once that poetry is nothing sacred
---no more sacred that is
than other things in life---
to answer yes, if life is uncorrupted
no better poetry is wanted.
I want this to be yours
in the sense that if you find and read it
it will be there in you already
and the leaflet then merely something
to leave behind, a little leaf
in the drawer of a sublet room.
What else does it come down to
but handing on scraps of paper
little figurines or phials
no stronger than the dry clay they are baked in
yet more than dry clay or paper
because the imagination crouches in them.
If we needed fire to remind us
that all true images
were scooped out of the mud
where our bodies curse and flounder
then perhaps that fire is coming
to sponge away the scribes and time-servers
and much that you would have loved will be lost as well
before you could handle it and know it
just as we almost miss each other
in the ill cloud of mistrust, who might have touched
hands quickly, shared food or given blood
for each other. I am thinking how we can use what we have
to invent what we need.
- adrienne rich, from 'Leaflets'
