Living - Adrienne Rich

[Larry Robinson]

Living    

in the earth-deposits    

of our history

Today a backhoe divulged    

out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle    

amber    

perfect    

a hundred-year-old
cure for fever    

or melancholy    

a tonic
for living on this earth    

in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered    

from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years   

 by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin    

of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold    

a test-tube or a pencil

She died    a famous woman   

 denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds    

came    

from the same source as her power

	- Adrienne Rich