Adrienne Rich - Necessities of Life lyrics
[Adrienne Rich - Necessities of Life lyrics]
Piece by piece I seem
To re-enter the world: I first began
A small, fixed dot, still see
That old myself, a dark-blue thumbtack
Pushed into the scene
A hard little head protruding
From the pointillist's buzz and bloom
After a time the dot
Begins to ooze certain heats melt it
Now I was hurriedly
Blurring into ranges
Of burnt red, burning green
Whole biographies swam up and
Swallowed me like Jonah
Jonah! I was Wittgenstein
Marry Wollstonecraft, the soul
Of Louis Jouvet, dead
In a blown-up photograph
Till, wolfed almost to shreds
I learned to make myself
Unappetizing scaly as a dry bulb
Thrown into a cellar
I used myself, let nothing use me
Like being on a private dole
Sometimes more like kneading bricks in Egypt
What life was there, was mine
Now and again to lay
One hand on a warm brick
And touch the sun's ghost
With economical joy
Now and again to name
Over the bare necessities
So much for those days soon
Practice may make me middling-perfect, I'll
Dare inhabit the world
Trenchant in motion as an eel, solid
As a cabbage head i have invitations:
A curl of mist steams upward
From a field, visible as my breath
Houses along a road stand waiting
Like old women knitting, breathless
To tell their tales
To re-enter the world: I first began
A small, fixed dot, still see
That old myself, a dark-blue thumbtack
Pushed into the scene
A hard little head protruding
From the pointillist's buzz and bloom
After a time the dot
Begins to ooze certain heats melt it
Now I was hurriedly
Blurring into ranges
Of burnt red, burning green
Whole biographies swam up and
Swallowed me like Jonah
Jonah! I was Wittgenstein
Marry Wollstonecraft, the soul
Of Louis Jouvet, dead
In a blown-up photograph
Till, wolfed almost to shreds
I learned to make myself
Unappetizing scaly as a dry bulb
Thrown into a cellar
I used myself, let nothing use me
Like being on a private dole
Sometimes more like kneading bricks in Egypt
What life was there, was mine
Now and again to lay
One hand on a warm brick
And touch the sun's ghost
With economical joy
Now and again to name
Over the bare necessities
So much for those days soon
Practice may make me middling-perfect, I'll
Dare inhabit the world
Trenchant in motion as an eel, solid
As a cabbage head i have invitations:
A curl of mist steams upward
From a field, visible as my breath
Houses along a road stand waiting
Like old women knitting, breathless
To tell their tales