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
