Tonight No Poetry Will Serve

By Adrienne Rich

This article appeared in the May 26, 2008 edition of The Nation.

May 7, 2008

Saw you walking barefoot
taking a long look
at the new moon's eyelid

later spread
sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair
asleep but not oblivious
of the unslept unsleeping
elsewhere

Tonight I think
no poetry
will serve

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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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