Adrienne Rich — White Night

Light at a window. Someone up at this snail-still hour. We who work this way have often worked in solitude. I’ve had to guess at her sewing her skin together as I sew mine though with a different stitch. Dawn after dawn, this neighbor burns like a candle dragging her bedspread through the dark house to her dark bed her head full of runes, syllables, refrains, this accurate dreamer sleepwalks the kitchen like a white moth, an elephant, a guilt. Somebody tried to put her to rest under an afghan knitted with wools the color of grass and blood but she has risen. Her lamplight licks at the icy panes and melts into the dawn. They will never prevent her who sleep the stone sleep of the past, the sleep of the drugged. One crystal second, I flash an eye across the cold unwrapping of light between us into her darkness-lancing eye —that’s all. Dawn is the test, the agony but we were meant to see it: After this, we may sleep, my sister, while the flames rise higher and higher, we can sleep.