Adrienne Rich - After Dark lyrics

You are falling asleep and I
Sit looking at you old tree of life
Old man whose death I wanted
I can't stir you up now

Faintly a phonograph needle
Whirs round in the last groove
Eating my heart to dust
That terrible record! how it played

Down years, wherever I was
In foreign languages even
Over and over, I know you better
Than you know yourself I know

You better than you know yourself I know
You until, self maimed
I limped off, torn at the roots

Stopped singing a whole year
Got a new body, new breath
Got children, croaked for words
Forgot to listen

Or read your mene tekel fading on the wall
Woke up one morning
And knew myself your daughter
Blood is a sacred poison

Now, unasked, you give ground
We only want to stifle
What's stifling us already
Alive now, root to crown, I'd give
Oh, - something - not to know
Our struggles now are ended
I seem to hold you, cupped
In my hands, and disappearing

When your memory fails -
No more to scourge my inconsistencies -
The sashcords of the world fly loose
A window crashes

Suddenly down i go to the woodbox
And take a stick of kindling
To prop the sash again
I grow protective toward the world

Now let's away from prison -
Underground seizures!
I used to huddle in the grave
I'd dug for you and bite

My tongue for fear it would babble
- Darling - i thought they'd find me there
Someday, sitting upright, shrunken

My hair like roots and in my lap
A mess of broken pottery - wasted libation -
And you embalmed beside me

No, let's away even now
There's a walk between doomed elms
(whose like we shall not see much longer)
And something"grass and water"

An old dream-photograph
I'll sit with you there and tease you
For wisdom if you like
Waiting till the blunt barge

Bumps along the shore
Poppies burn in the twilight
Like smudge pots i think you hardly see me

But - this is the dream now -
Your fears blow out, off, over the water
At the last, your hand feels steady