There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.
I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled,
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.
I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light —
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.
And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.
(1991)
_____________________________
ADRIENNE RICH
Collected Poems
1950-2012
Norton, 2016
In 1951 Adrienne Rich published A Change of World and came right out of the poetry tree completely formed —
and remarkably she continued to form and re-form and grow for the next half-century.
One of the major American poets of
the 20th and 21st centuries.
[ BA ]
