Adrienne Rich - I Dream I'm the Death of Orpheus lyrics

I am walking rapidly through
Striations of light
And dark thrown under an arcade

I am a woman in the prime of life
With certain powers
And those powers whose faces I rarely see
I am a woman in the prime of life
Driving her dead poet in a black Rolls-Royce
Through a landscape of twilight and thorns
A woman with a certain mission
Which if obeyed to the letter
Will leave her intact
A woman with the nerves of a panther
A woman with contacts among Hell's Angels
A woman feeling the fullness of her powers
At the precise moment when she
Must not use them a woman sworn to lucidity
Who sees through the mayhem, the smoky fires
Of these underground streets
Her dead poet learning to walk
Backward against the wind
On the wrong side of the mirror