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