Even Then Maybe

By Adrienne Rich

This article appeared in the June 4, 2007 edition of The Nation.

May 17, 2007

Not spent   those bloodshot friendships   those
soul-marriages sealed and torn
those smiles of pain
I told her a mouthful
I shut my mouth against him

Throat thick with tears
how words sound when you swallow
--and under the roof
of the mouth   long stroke
reaching from the tongue's root

No, I was not living with her at the time
At the time I was not living
with him, at the time we were living together
I was living with neither of them
--was dwelling you could say
But as for living at that time
we were all living together with many others
for whom living was precisely the question

Haven't seen evenings like that since
vesuvian emerald to brass dissolving
--a sentence you'd waited for
taken back half-spoken--
Luxury even then maybe
evenings like those

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About Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich's most recent book is The School Among the Ruins: Poems 2000-2004. A selection of her essays, Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations, appeared in 2003.

She edited Muriel Rukeyser's Selected Poems for the Library of America. She is a recipient of the National Book Foundation's 2006 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, among other awards.

Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth: Poems 2004-2006 will be published in October 2007.

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