Adrienne Rich — Char

1 There is bracken there in the dark mulberry there is the village where no villager survived there are the hitlerians there are the foresters feeding the partisans from frugal larders there is the moon ablaze in every quarter there is the moon "of tin and sage" and unseen pilots dropping explosive gifts into meadows of fog and crickets there is the cuckoo and the tiny snake there is the table set at every meal for freedom whose chair stays vacant the young men in their newfound passions (Love along with them the ones they love) Obscurity, code, the invisible existence of a thrush in the reeds, the poet watching as the blood washes off the revolver in the bucket Redbreast, your song shakes loose a ruin of memories A horrible day…Perhaps he knew, at that final instant? The village had to be spared at any price… How can you hear me? I speak from so far… The flowering broom hid us in a blazing yellow mist… 2 This war will prolong itself beyond any platonic armistice. The implanting of political concepts will go on amid upheavals and under cover of self-confi- dent hypocrisy. Don't smile. Thrust aside both skepticism and resignation and prepare your soul to face an intramural confrontation with demons as cold-blooded as microbes. The poet in wartime, the Surréalistes' younger brother turned realist (the village had to be spared at any price) all eyes on him in the woods crammed with masquisards ex- pecting him to signal to fire and save their comrade shook his head and watched Bernard's execution knowing that the random shooting of a revolver may be the simplest surreal act but never changes the balance of power and that real acts are not [simple] The poet, prone to exaggerate, thinks clearly under torture knowing the end of the war would mean no end to the microbes frozen in each soul the young freedom fighters i n love with the Resistance fed by a thrill for violence familiar as his own jaw under the razor 3 Insoluble riverrain conscience echo of the future I keep vigil for you here by the reeds of Elkhorn Slough and the brown mouth of the Salinas River going green where the white egret fishes the fragile margins Hermetic guide in resistance I've found you and lost you several times in my life You were never just the poet appalled and transfixed by war you were the maker of terrible delicate decisions and that did not smudge your sense of limits You saw squirrels crashing from the tops of burning pines when the canister exploded and worse and worse and you were in charge of every risk the incendiary motives of others were in your charge and the need for a courage wrapped in absolute tact and you decided and lived like that and you held poetry at your lips a piece of wild thyme ripped from a burning meadow a mimosa twig from still unravaged country You kept your senses about you like that and like this I keep vigil for you.