Adrienne Rich - Char lyrics

There is bracken there in the dark mulberry
There is the village where
No villager survived
There are the hitlerians there
Are the foresters
Feeding the partisans from frugal larders

There is the moon ablaze in every quarter
There is the moon "of tin and
Sage" and unseen pilots dropping
Explosive gifts into meadows of
Fog and crickets
There is the cuckoo and the tiny snake

There is the table set at every meal
For freedom whose chair stays vacant
The young men in their newfound passions
(Love along with them the ones they love)

Obscurity, code, the invisible existence
Of a thrush in the reeds, the poet watching
As the blood washes off the
Revolver in the bucket
Redbreast, your song shakes loose
A ruin of memories

A horrible day…Perhaps he knew
At that final instant?
The village had to be spared at any price
How can you hear me? I speak from so far
The flowering broom hid us in
A blazing yellow mist

This war will prolong it'self beyond
Any platonic armistice the implanting
Of political concepts will go on amid
Upheavals and under cover of self-confi-
Dent hypocrisy don't smile thrust aside
Both skepticism and resignation
And prepare your soul to face an
Intramural confrontation with demons as
Cold-blooded as microbes

The poet in wartime
The Surréalistes' younger brother
Turned realist
(the village had to be spared at any price)
All eyes on him in the
Woods crammed with masquisards ex-
Pecting him to signal to fire
And save their comrade shook his head and
Watched Bernard's execution
Knowing that the random shooting
Of a revolver
May be the simplest surreal act but never
Changes the balance of power and
That real acts are not

The poet, prone to exaggerate
Thinks clearly under torture

Knowing the end of the war
Would mean no end to the
Microbes frozen in each soul
The young freedom fighters i
N love with the Resistance
Fed by a thrill for violence
Familiar as his own jaw under the razor

Insoluble riverrain conscience echo
Of the future i keep vigil for you here by
The reeds of Elkhorn Slough
And the brown mouth of the
Salinas River going green
Where the white egret fishes
The fragile margins
Hermetic guide in resistance I've found
You and lost you
Several times in my life You were never just
The poet appalled and transfixed by
War you were the maker
Of terrible delicate decisions and
That did not smudge
Your sense of limit's You
Saw squirrels crashing
From the tops of burning pines
When the canister exploded
And worse and worse and you were
In charge of every risk
The incendiary motives of others
Were in your charge
And the need for a courage
Wrapped in absolute tact
And you decided and lived like that and you
Held poetry at your lips a
Piece of wild thyme ripped
From a burning meadow a mimosa twig
From still unravaged country You
Kept your senses
About you like that and like this
I keep vigil for you