Twenty-One Love Poems XXI

By Adrienne Rich

 

 

 

 

XXI

The dark lintels, the blue and foreign stones

of the great round rippled by stone implements

the midsummer night light rising form beneath

the horizon—when I said “a cleft of light”

I meant this. And this is not Stonehenge

simply nor any place but the mind

casting back to where her solitude,

shared, could be chosen without loneliness,

not easily nor without pains to stake out

the circle, the heavy shadows, the great light.

I choose to be a figure in that light,

half-blotted by darkness, something moving

across that space, the color of stone

greeting the moon, yet more than stone:

a woman. I choose to walk here. And to draw this circle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

XXI is the final poem in 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.