Adrienne Rich - Like This Together lyrics

Wind rocks the car
We sit parked by the river
Silence between our teeth
Birds scatter across islands
Of broken ice another time
I’d have said: "Canada geese, "
Knowing you love them
A year, ten years from now
I’ll remember this
This sitting like drugged birds
In a glass case not why, only that we
Were here like this together

They’re tearing down, tearing up
This city, block by block rooms cut in half
Hang like flayed carcasses
Their old roses in rags
Famous streets have forgotten
Where they were going only
A fact could be so dreamlike
They’re tearing down the houses
We met and lived in
Soon our two bodies will be all
Left standing from that era

We have, as they say
Certain things in common i mean: a view
From a bathroom window
Over slate to stiff pigeons
Huddled every morning the way
Water tastes from our tap
Which you marvel at, letting
It splash into the glass
Because of you I notice the taste of water
A luxury I might otherwise have missed

Our words misunderstand us
Sometimes at night you are my mother:
Old detailed griefs
Twitch at my dreams, and I
Crawl against you, fighting
For shelter, making you my cave sometimes
You’re the wave of birth
That drowns me in my first
Nightmare i suck the air
Miscarried knowledge twists us
Like hot sheets thrown askew

Dead winter doesn’t die
It wears away, a piece of carrion
Picked clean at last
Rained away or burnt dry
Our desiring does this
Make no mistake, I’m speaking
Of fact: through mere indifference
We could prevent it
Only our fierce attention
Gets hyacinths out of those
Hard cerebral lumps
Unwraps the wet buds down
The whole length of a stem