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Adrienne Rich - Twenty-One Love Poems VIII
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	VIII
	
I can see myself years back at Sunion,
	hurting with an infected foot, Philoctetes
	in woman’s form, limping the long path,
	lying on a headland over the dark sea,
	looking down the red rocks to where a soundless curl
	of white told me a wave had struck,
	imagining the pull of that water from that height,
	knowing deliberate suicide wasn’t my métier,
	yet all the time nursing, measuring that wound.
	Well, that’s finished. The woman who cherished
	her suffering is dead. I am her descendant.
	I love the scar-tissue she handed on to me,
	but I want to go on from here with you
	fighting the temptation to make a career of pain.
	 
	 
	 
	 
	 
	 
	 
	 
	 
	 
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