Adrienne Rich - Heroines lyrics

Exceptional even deviant
You draw your long skirts
Across the nineteenth century your mind
Burns long after death
Not like the harbor beacon
But like a pyre of driftwood on the beach
You are spared illiteracy
Death by pneumonia
Teeth which leave the gums
The seamstress' clouded eyes
The mill-girls' shortening breath
By a collection of circumstances
Soon to be known as class privilege
The law says you can possess nothing
In a world where property is everything
You belong first to your father
Then to him who chooses you
If you fail to marry
You are without recourse unable to earn
A workingman's salary forbidden to vote
Forbidden to speak in public
If married you are legally dead the law says
You may not bequeath property
Save to your children or male kin
That your husband has the right
Of the slaveholder
To hunt down and re-possess you
Should you escape you may inherit slaves
But have no power to free them
Your skin is fair
You have been taught that light came
To the Dark Continent with white power
That the Indians live in filth
And occult animal rites
Your mother wore corsets to choke her spirit
Which if you refuse
You are jeered for refusing
You have heard many sermons and have carried
Your own interpretations
Locked in your heart

You are a woman strong in health
Through a collection of circumstances
Soon to be known as class privilege
Which if you break the social compact
You lose outright
When you open your mouth in public
Human excrement is flung at you
You are exceptional in personal circumstance
In indignation you give up believing
In protection in Scripture
In man made laws respectable as you look
You are an outlaw your mind burns
Not like the harbor beacon but like a fire
Of fiercer origin you begin speaking out
And a great gust of freedom
Rushes in with your words
Yet still you speak
In the shattered language
Of a partial vision
You draw your long skirts deviant
Across the nineteenth century
Registering injustice
Failing to make it whole
How can I fail to love your clarity and fury
How can I give you all your due
Take courage from your courage
Honor your exact legacy as it is
Recognizing as well
That it is not enough?