Adrienne Rich - If/As Though Time Exposres lyrics

Glance into glittering moisture
Webbed in lashes unshed tears
I’d guess as yours
Known odor inhaled years later
In a brief social kiss sudden conjuncture
Soap, breath, hair other embraces
Diffused once, again, time’s exhilarations

Is there a doctor in the house
Who in his plain mindful way
Cared for his patients through
Pain rain and snow
Who at each and every grave side knew
What could be done he’d done

And where have all the patients gone
Who wanted (more than one) a tending hand
Across the forehead at the end

And what’s the house?

They’d say she was humorless
Didn’t go to the parties
Giggle show white teeth

So would suspend her in their drained
Definitions

Her body had nipples, eyes
A tongue and other parts

Mirthful obscene

Which rose from love quite often
Hilarious into daylight even forgetting why

When I stretched out my legs
Beyond your wishful thinking
Into the long history they
Were made for running
Caught the train you missed
Sought you eye level
At the next station You having
Run the whole way
To seize my face between your hands your kind
Of victory or benediction then
We swerved down tunnel
In separate cars What is it to
Catch yourself mirror-twinned
In an underwater window what
About speed matching
Technology and desire getting off
At the last stop: dispersed

You’ve got ocean through sheet
Glass brandy and firedog
Ocean in it's shaking
Looks back at you with a blurred eye

Who’s that reflected naked and sundered

Reaching a hand

Go down to the beach, walk in the wind
Pick up the washed-in shell at your foot

Shell castle built on sand
Your body and what’s your soul?

Is there a ghost-in-waiting?
Time to bring that one in