Atlas

A patriot is not a weapon. A patriot is one who wrestles for the soul of her country as she wrestles for her own being....

not somewhere else, but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.



The world's
not wanton
only wild and wavering

I wanted to choose words that even you
would have to be changed by

Take the word
of my pulse, loving and ordinary
Send out your signals, hoist
your dark scribbled flags
but take
my hand

All wars are useless to the dead

My hands are knotted in the rope
and I cannot sound the bell

My hands are frozen to the switch
and I cannot throw it

The foot is in the wheel

When it's finished and we're lying
in a stubble of blistered flowers
eyes gaping, mouths staring
dusted with crushed arterial blues

I'll have done nothing
even for you?


-Adrienne Rich from the poem "An Atlas of the Difficult World"