Adrienne Rich - The Stranger lyrics

Looking as I’ve looked before
Straight down the heart
Of the street to the river
Walking the rivers of the avenues
Feeling the shudder of the
Caves beneath the asphalt
Watching the lights turn on in the towers
Walking as I’ve walked before
Like a man, like a woman, in the city
My visionary anger cleansing my sight
And the detailed perceptions of mercy
Flowering from that anger

If I come into a room out
Of the sharp misty light
And hear them talking a dead language
If they ask me my identity
What can I say but i am the androgyne
I am the living mind you fail to describe
In your dead language
The lost noun, the verb surviving
Only in the infinitive
The letters of my name are
Written under the lids of the newborn child