Poetry I

Someone at a table under a brown metal lamp is studying the history of poetry. Someone in the library at closing time has learned to say "modernism," "trope," "vatic," "text." She is listening for shreds of music, he is searching for his name back in the old country. They cannot learn without teachers. They are like us. What we were. If you remember. In a corner of night, a voice is crying in a kind of whisper more. Can you remember when we thought the poets taught how to live? That is not the voice of a critic, or a common reader. It is someone young, in anger, hardly knowing what to ask, who finds our lines, our glosses, wanting in this world - Adrienne Rich