For Adrienne Rich

Do I trespass if I knock at your door Would you be frightened to see I also have a full cup And call the cop because I am black and you are white You were none of this I would believe We had no dividing line except that within our gender And yet for all, our words could climb from bed to bed And I could against their promise lay my head. I am not threatened by a woman revolting against history And fear the dumb traditions than more than I fear The truth liberating our different poles to embrace the center of our love There is no dividing line between the poet and the word. What then shall we make for a facade of difference The absence or presence of the sun For day and night only describe the inadequacy of the eyes Stars are liquid boilers and builders of atoms into dust Nothing solid in the bright space of it my mass would trust Atoms, cells, male, female, lovers and distinctions Deceivers all, we made them to be the delusion of us Endlessly we yield To the giving we are receiving back again This coming and receding Pounding in our hearts, wrapping us in swaddling tides Nursed by lactating time ... this is all we have and kiss Time the imitator of eternity by persistency Have fooled our hearts with vanity Now we are not so rich again without your words Rolling, rocking, to and fro The pendulum of our illusion is a dry breast of milky way We are ahead by the words wings beating in our brain The cage flustering the feathers in their flight From trees, herds and people, rocks edifying the rigor of the stream Life moves backward while standing still From the seat where imagination changes gear I hear an engine groaning up an hill Across inflexible landscapes, and the many distinctions of our selves The illusion of difference is a solid wall. Let us like children blow our bubbles still And seed the air with its own vapor I love them coming into being, and suddenly popping out again And for some pretty ones felt the weight of love's despair so What is the meaning of morning here if night is always there Waiting at the curving of the sun? Who left the door open for the milk man coming up the stair He picks up the empty bottles, leaving apples in their place You must bring down to him milk again To nourish my famished tears among the ladderless world of stars.