Adrienne Rich — Poetry: I

Someone at a table under a brown metal lamp is studying the history of poetry. Someone in the library at closing-time has learned to say modernism, trope, vatic, text. She is listening for shreds of music. He is searching for his name back in the old country. They cannot learn without teachers. They are like us      what we were if you remember. In a corner of night a voice is crying in a kind of whisper: More! Can you remember      when we thought the poets taught      how to live? That is not the voice of a critic nor a common reader it is someone young      in anger hardly knowing what to ask who finds our lines      our glosses wanting      in this world.