Adrienne Rich - For Example lyrics
[Adrienne Rich - For Example lyrics]
Sometimes you meet an old man
Whose fist isn't clenched blue-white
Someone like that old poet
Whose grained palm once travelled
The bodies of sick children
Back in the typed line
Was room for everything: the blue
Grape hyacinth patch, the voluntary touch
Of cheek on breast, the ear
Alert for a changed heartbeat
And for other sounds too
That live in a typed line:
The breath of animals, stopping
And starting up of busses
Trashfires in empty lots
Attention once given returned again as power
An old man's last few evenings
Might be inhabited not by a public
Fountains of applause off
Auditorium benches
Tributes read at hotel banquets
But by reverberations
The ear had long desired
Accepted and absorbed
The late poem might be written
In a night suddenly awake
With quiet new sounds
As when a searchlight plays
Against the dark bush tangle
And birds speak in reply
Whose fist isn't clenched blue-white
Someone like that old poet
Whose grained palm once travelled
The bodies of sick children
Back in the typed line
Was room for everything: the blue
Grape hyacinth patch, the voluntary touch
Of cheek on breast, the ear
Alert for a changed heartbeat
And for other sounds too
That live in a typed line:
The breath of animals, stopping
And starting up of busses
Trashfires in empty lots
Attention once given returned again as power
An old man's last few evenings
Might be inhabited not by a public
Fountains of applause off
Auditorium benches
Tributes read at hotel banquets
But by reverberations
The ear had long desired
Accepted and absorbed
The late poem might be written
In a night suddenly awake
With quiet new sounds
As when a searchlight plays
Against the dark bush tangle
And birds speak in reply