Adrienne Rich — Living in the Cave

Reading the Parable of the Cave while living in the cave, black moss, deadening my footsteps candles stuck on rock-ledges weakening my eys These things around me, with their daily requirements: fill me, empty me, talk to me, warm me, let me suck on you. Every one of them has a plan that depends on me stalactites want to become stalagmites veins of ore imagine their preciousness candles see themselves disembodied into gas and taking flight the bat hangs dreaming of an airy world None of them, not one sees me as I see them.