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Adrienne Rich - Twenty-One Love Poems IV
Work rating: Low

	 
	 
	 
	IV
	
I come home from you through the early light of spring
	flashing off ordinary walls, the Pez Dorado,
	the Discount Wares, the shoe-store… I’m lugging my sack
	of groceries, I dash for the elevator
	where a man, taut, elderly, carefully composed
	lets the door almost close on me.—For god’s sake hold it!
	I croak at him.—Hysterical,--he breathes my way.
	I let myself into the kitchen, unload my bundles,
	make coffee, open the window, put on Nina Simone
	singing Here comes the sun… I open the mail,
	drinking delicious coffee, delicious music,
	my body still both light and heavy with you. The mail
	lets fall a Xerox of something written by a man
	aged 27, a hostage, tortured in prison:
	My genitals have been the object of such a sadistic display
	they keep me constantly awake with the pain…
	Do whatever you can to survive.
	You know, I think that men love wars…
	And my incurable anger, my unmendable wounds
	break open further with tears, I am crying helplessly,
	and they still control the world, and you are not in my arms.
	 
	 
	 
	 
	 
	 
	 
	 
	 
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