By Adrienne Rich (from Eastern War Time)

A woman of sixty   driving

the great grades    sea-level to high desert

a century slipping from her shoulders

a blink in geological time

though heavy to those who had to wear it

Knowledge has entered her connective tissue and

into sand dissolved her cartilage

If her skeleton is found this will be clear

or was it knowledge    maybe a dangerous questioning

At night she lies   eyes open   seeing

the young who do not wander in the moonlight

as in a poem    faces seen

for thirty years   under the fire-hoses

walking through mobs to school

dragged singing from the buses

following the coffins

and here    brows knitted under knotted scarfs

dark eyes   searching armed streets

for the end of degradation