Adrienne Rich
After a Sentence in “Malte Laurids Brigge”
The month's eye blurs
The winter's lungs are cracked
Along bloated gutters race,
shredded, your injured legions,
the waste of our remorseless search.
Your old, unuttered names are holes
worn in our skins
through which we feel from time to time
abrasive wind.
*Those who are loved live poorly and in danger*
We who were loved will never
unlive that crippling fever.
A day returns, a certain weather
splatters the panes, and we
once more stare in the eye of our first failure