For a Friend in Travail
by Adrienne Rich

Waking from violence: the surgeon's probe left in the foot
paralyzing the body from the waist down.
Dark before dawn: wrapped in a shawl, to walk the house
the Drinking Gourd slung in the northwest,
half-slice of moon to the south
through dark panes. A time to speak to you.

What are you going through? she said, is the great question.
Philosopher of oppression, theorist
of the victories of force.

We write from the marrow of our bones. What she did not
ask, or tell: how victims save their own lives.

The crawl along the ledge, then the ravelling span of fibre
strung
from one side to the other, I've dreamed that too.
Waking, not sure we made it. Relief, appallment, of waking.
Consciousness. O, no. To sleep again.
O to sleep without dreaming.

How day breaks, when it breaks, how clear and light the moon
melting into moon-colored air
moist and sweet, here on the western edge.
Love for the world, and we are part of it.
How the poppies break from their sealed envelopes
she did not tell.

What are you going through, there on the other edge?
 
footnote:
"The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: "What are you going through?"
– Simone Weil, Waiting for God, 115

– Reprinted from An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988—1991, by Adrienne Rich, © 1991. With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.