Adrienne Rich — Heroines

Exceptional even deviant you draw your long skirts across the nineteenth century Your mind burns long after death not like the harbor beacon but like a pyre of driftwood on the beach You are spared illiteracy death by pneumonia teeth which leave the gums the seamstress' clouded eyes the mill-girls' shortening breath by a collection of circumstances soon to be known as class privilege The law says you can possess nothing in a world where property is everything You belong first to your father then to him who chooses you if you fail to marry you are without recourse unable to earn a workingman's salary forbidden to vote forbidden to speak in public if married you are legally dead the law says you may not bequeath property save to your children or male kin that your husband has the right of the slaveholder to hunt down and re-possess you should you escape You may inherit slaves but have no power to free them your skin is fair you have been taught that light came to the Dark Continent with white power that the Indians live in filth and occult animal rites Your mother wore corsets to choke her spirit which if you refuse you are jeered for refusing you have heard many sermons and have carried your own interpretations locked in your heart You are a woman strong in health through a collection of circumstances soon to be known as class privilege which if you break the social compact you lose outright When you open your mouth in public human excrement is flung at you you are exceptional in personal circumstance in indignation you give up believing in protection in Scripture in man-made laws respectable as you look you are an outlaw Your mind burns not like the harbor beacon but like a fire of fiercer origin you begin speaking out and a great gust of freedom rushes in with your words yet still you speak in the shattered language of a partial vision You draw your long skirts deviant across the nineteenth century registering injustice failing to make it whole How can I fail to love your clarity and fury how can I give you all your due take courage from your courage honor your exact legacy as it is recognizing as well that it is not enough?