A life hauls itself uphill <br />through hoar-mist steaming <br />the sun's tongue licking <br />leaf upon leaf into stricken liquid <br />When? When? cry the soothseekers <br />but time is a bloodshot eye <br />seeing its last of beauty its own <br />foreclosure <br />a bloodshot mind <br />finding itself unspeakable <br />What is the last thought? <br />Now I will let you know? <br />or, Now I know? <br />(porridge of skull-splinters, brain tissue <br />mouth and throat membrane, cranial fluid) <br /> <br />Shattered head on the breast <br />of a wooded hill <br />Laid down there endlessly so <br />tendrils soaked into matted compose <br />became a root <br />torqued over the faint springhead <br />groin whence illegible <br />matter leaches: worm-borings, spurts of silt <br />volumes of sporic changes <br />hair long blown into far follicles <br />blasted into a chosen place <br /> <br />Revenge on the head (genitals, breast, untouched) <br />revenge on the mouth <br />packed with its inarticulate confessions <br />revenge on the eyes <br />green-gray and restless <br />revenge on the big and searching lips <br />the tender tongue <br />revenge on the sensual, on the nose the <br />carrier of history <br />revenge on the life devoured <br />in another incineration <br /> <br />You can walk by such a place, the earth is <br />made of them <br />where the stretched tissue of a field or woods <br />is humid <br />with beloved matter <br />the soothseekers have withdrawn <br />you feel no ghost, only a sporic chorus <br />when that place utters its worn sigh <br />let us have peace <br /> <br />And the shattered head answers back <br /> <br />And I believed I was loved, I believed I loved <br />Who did this to us?<br /><br />Adrienne Rich<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/shattered-head/
