Adrienne Rich - Poetry: I lyrics

Someone at a table under a brown metal lamp
Is studying the history of poetry
Someone in the library at closing-time
Has learned to say modernism
Trope, vatic, text
She is listening for shreds of music
He is searching for his name
Back in the old country
They cannot learn without teachers
They are like us what we were
If you remember

In a corner of night a voice
Is crying in a kind of whisper: More!
Can you remember when we thought
The poets taught how to live?
That is not the voice of a critic
Nor a common reader
It is someone young in anger
Hardly knowing what to ask
Who finds our lines our glosses
Wanting in this world