Adrienne Rich - Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff lyrics

The autumn feels slowed down
Summer still holds on here, even the light
Seems to last longer than it should
Or maybe I'm using it to the thin edge
The moon rolls in the air
I didn't want this child
You're the only one I've told
I want a child maybe, someday, but not now
Otto has a calm, complacent way
Of following me with his eyes, as if to say
Soon you'll have your hands full!
And yes, I will this child will be mine
Not his, the failures, if I fail
Will all be mine we're not good, Clara
At learning to prevent these things
And once we have a child it is ours
But lately I feel beyond Otto or anyone
I know now the kind of work I have to do
It takes such energy! I have the feeling I'm
Moving somewhere, patiently, impatiently
In my loneliness i'm looking


Everywhere in nature
For new forms, old forms in new places
The planes of an antique mouth, let's say
Among the leaves i know and do not know
What I am searching for
Remember those months in the studio together
You up to your strong forearms
In the wet clay, i trying to make something
Of the strange impressions
Assailing me - the Japanese
Flowers and birds on silk, the drunks
Sheltering in the Louvre, that river-light
Those faces did we know exactly
Why we were there? Paris unnerved you
You found it too much, yet you went on
With your work and later we met there again
Both married then
And I thought you and Rilke
Both seemed unnerved i felt
A kind of joylessness
Between you of course he and I
Have had our difficulties maybe I was jealous
Of him, to begin with, taking you from me
Maybe I married Otto to fill up
My loneliness for you
Rainer, of course, knows more
Than Otto knows
He believes in women but he feeds on us
Like all of them his whole life, his art
Is protected by women which of
Us could say that? Which of us, Clara
Hasn't had to take that leap
Out beyond our being women
To save our work? or is it to save ourselves?
Marriage is lonelier than solitude
Do you know: I was dreaming I had died
Giving birth to the child
I couldn't paint of speak or even move

My child -I think -survived me
But what was funny in the dream was
Rainer had written my requiem-
A long, beautiful poem
And calling me his friend i was your friend
But in the dream you didn't say a word
In the dream his poem was like a letter
To someone who has no right
To be there but must be treated gently
Like a guest
Who comes on the wrong day clara
Why don't I dream of you?
That photo of the two of us -I have it still
You and I looking hard into each other
And my painting behind us how we used to work
Side by side! And how I've worked since then
Trying to create according to our plan
That we'd bring, against all odds
Our full power
To every subject hold back nothing
Because we were women clara
Our strength still lies
In the things we used to talk about:
How life and death take one another's hands
The struggle for truth
Our old pledge against guilt
And now I feel dawn and the coming day
I love walking in my studio
Seeing my pictures
Come alive in the light sometimes I feel
It is myself that kicks inside me
Myself I must give suck to, love
I wish we could have done this for each other
All our lives, but we can't
They say a pregnant woman
Dreams her own death but life and death
Take one another's hands clara
I feel so full
Of work, the life I see ahead, and love
For you, who of all people
However badly I say this
Will hear all I say and cannot say