Adrienne Rich — Homage to Winter

You: a woman too old for passive contemplation caught staring out a window at bird-of-paradise spikes jewelled with rain, across an alley It’s winter in this land of roses, roses sometimes the fog lies thicker around you than your past sometimes the Pacific radiance scours the air to lapis In this new world you feel backward along the hem of your whole life questioning every breadth Nights you can watch the moon shed skin after skin over and over, alway a shape of imbalance except at birth and in the full You, still trying to learn how to live, what must be done thought in death you will be complete whatever you do But death is not the answer. On these flat green leaves light skates like a golden blade high in the dull-green pine sit two mushroom-colored doves afterglow overflows across the bungalow roof between the signs for the three-way stop over everything that is: the cotton pants stirring on the line, the empty Coke can by the fence onto the still unflowering mysterious acacia and a sudden chill takes the air Backward you dream to a porch you stood on a year ago snow flying quick as thought sticking to your shoulder gone Blue shadows, ridged and fading on a snow-swept road the shortest day of the year Backward you dream to glare ice and ice-wet pussywillows to Riverside Drive, the wind cut loose from Hudson’s Bay driving tatters into your face And back you come at last to that room without a view, where webs of frost blinded the panes at noon where already you had begun to make the visible world your conscience asking things: What can you tell me? what am I doing? what must I do?