Adrienne Rich - The Night has a Thousand Eyes" lyrics
[Adrienne Rich - The Night has a Thousand Eyes" lyrics]
The taxi meter clicking up
Loose change who can afford to pay
Basalt blurring spectral headlights
Darkblue stabbed with platinum
Raincoats glassy with evening wet
The city gathering
It'self for darkness
Into a bitter-chocolate vein
The east side with it's trinkets
The west side with it's memories
Wherever you had to connect:
Question of passport, glances, bag
Dumped late on the emptied carousel
Departure zones
Where all could become mislaid, disinvented
Undocumented, unverified
All but the footprint of your soul
In the cool neutral air
Till the jumbo jet groaned and gathered
It'self over Long Island
Gathered you into your earth-craving
Belly-self, that desire
Gaze through the sliced-glass window
Nothing is foreign here
Nothing you haven’t thought or taught
Nothing your thumbnail doesn’t know
Your old poets and painters knew it
Knocking back their wine
You’re just in a cab driven wild
On the FDR by a Russian Jew
Who can’t afford to care if he lives or dies
You rode with him long ago
Between two silvered glass urns an expensive
Textile is shouldered
It’s after dark now, floodlight
Pours into the wired boutique
There are live roses in the urns
There are security codes
In the wall there are children, dead
Near death whose fingers worked this
Intricate desirable thing
Nothing you haven’t seen on your palm
Nothing your thumbnail doesn’t know
After one stroke she looks at the river
Remembers her name Muriel
Writes it in her breath
On the big windowpane
Never again perhaps
To walk in the city freely
But here is her landscape this old
Industrial building converted
For artists her river the Lordly Hudson
Paul named it which has no peer
In Europe or the East
Her mind on that water widening
Among five men walks a woman
Tall as the tallest man, taller than several
A mixed creature
From country poverty good schooling
And from that position seeing
Further than many
Beauty, fame, notwithstanding standing
For something else
Where do you come from?
Como tú, like you, from nothing
Julia de Burgos, of herself, fallen
In Puerto Rican Harlem
Sometime tonight you’ll fall down
On a bed far from your heart’s desire
In the city as it is
For you now: her face or his
Private across an aisle throttling uptown
Bent over clasped hands or
Staring off then suddenly glaring:
Back off! Don’t ask! you will meet those eyes
(none of them meeting)
The wrapped candies from Cleveland
The acclaim of East St louis
Deadweight trophies borne
Through interboro fissures of the mind
In search of Charlie Parker
Where are you sleeping tonight? with whom?
In crippled Roebling’s harbor room
Where he watched his bridge transpire?
Hart Miles Muriel Julia Paul
You will meet the eyes you were searching for
And the day will break
As we say, it breaks
As we don’t say, of the night
As we don’t say of the night
Loose change who can afford to pay
Basalt blurring spectral headlights
Darkblue stabbed with platinum
Raincoats glassy with evening wet
The city gathering
It'self for darkness
Into a bitter-chocolate vein
The east side with it's trinkets
The west side with it's memories
Wherever you had to connect:
Question of passport, glances, bag
Dumped late on the emptied carousel
Departure zones
Where all could become mislaid, disinvented
Undocumented, unverified
All but the footprint of your soul
In the cool neutral air
Till the jumbo jet groaned and gathered
It'self over Long Island
Gathered you into your earth-craving
Belly-self, that desire
Gaze through the sliced-glass window
Nothing is foreign here
Nothing you haven’t thought or taught
Nothing your thumbnail doesn’t know
Your old poets and painters knew it
Knocking back their wine
You’re just in a cab driven wild
On the FDR by a Russian Jew
Who can’t afford to care if he lives or dies
You rode with him long ago
Between two silvered glass urns an expensive
Textile is shouldered
It’s after dark now, floodlight
Pours into the wired boutique
There are live roses in the urns
There are security codes
In the wall there are children, dead
Near death whose fingers worked this
Intricate desirable thing
Nothing you haven’t seen on your palm
Nothing your thumbnail doesn’t know
After one stroke she looks at the river
Remembers her name Muriel
Writes it in her breath
On the big windowpane
Never again perhaps
To walk in the city freely
But here is her landscape this old
Industrial building converted
For artists her river the Lordly Hudson
Paul named it which has no peer
In Europe or the East
Her mind on that water widening
Among five men walks a woman
Tall as the tallest man, taller than several
A mixed creature
From country poverty good schooling
And from that position seeing
Further than many
Beauty, fame, notwithstanding standing
For something else
Where do you come from?
Como tú, like you, from nothing
Julia de Burgos, of herself, fallen
In Puerto Rican Harlem
Sometime tonight you’ll fall down
On a bed far from your heart’s desire
In the city as it is
For you now: her face or his
Private across an aisle throttling uptown
Bent over clasped hands or
Staring off then suddenly glaring:
Back off! Don’t ask! you will meet those eyes
(none of them meeting)
The wrapped candies from Cleveland
The acclaim of East St louis
Deadweight trophies borne
Through interboro fissures of the mind
In search of Charlie Parker
Where are you sleeping tonight? with whom?
In crippled Roebling’s harbor room
Where he watched his bridge transpire?
Hart Miles Muriel Julia Paul
You will meet the eyes you were searching for
And the day will break
As we say, it breaks
As we don’t say, of the night
As we don’t say of the night