Adrienne Rich — Face to Face

Never to be lonely like that— The Early American figure on the beach in black coat and knee-breeches scanning the didactic storm in privacy, never to hear the prairie wolves in their lunar hilarity circling one’s little all, one’s claim to be Law and Prophets for all that lawlessness, never to whet the appetite weeks early, for a face, a hand longed-for and dreaded— How people used to meet! starved, intense, the old Christmas gifts saved up till spring, and the old plain words, and each with his God-given secret, spelled out through months of snow and silence, burning under the bleached scalp; behind dry lips a loaded gun.