By Adrienne Rich
I’ve redone you by daylight.
Squatted before your gauntness
chipping away. Slivers of rock
piling up like petals.
All night I’d worked to illuminate the skull.
By dawn you were pure electric. You pulsed like a star.
You awoke in the last darkness
before the light poured in.
I’ve redone you by daylight.
Now I can submit you to the arts administrator
and the council of patrons
who could never take your measure.
This time they will love you,
standing on the glass table, fluent and robed at last,
and all your origins countered.
I wrap you in pure white sheets to mail you,
I brush you off my apron,
the charged filings crunch like cinders on the floor.
