Twenty-One Love Poems XVI

XVI

Across a city from you, I’m with you,

just as an August night

moony, inlet-warm, seabathed, I watched you sleep,

the scrubbed, sheenless wood of the dressing-table

cluttered with our brushes, books, vials in the moonlight—

or a salt-mist orchard, lying at your side

watching red sunset through the screendoor of the cabin,

G minor Mozart on the tape-recorder,

falling asleep to the music of the sea.

This island of Manhattan is wide enough

for both of us, and narrow:

I can hear your breath tonight, I know how your face

lies upturned, the halflight tracing

your generous, delicate mouth

where grief and laughter sleep together.

This is poem XVI, from Adrienne Rich's Twenty-One Love Poems collection, written between 1974-1976.  These were originally published as a complete collection but were later re-published and included as part of another collection of works, written between 1974-1977, called The Dream Of A Common Language.

Twenty-One Love Poems and The Floating Poem, (un-numbered) can all be found here at oldpoetry.