Poems Quotes

“The mother I needed to call my mother was silenced before I was born.”
― Adrienne Rich, Poems: Selected and New, 1950-1974

“Was it worth while to lay—
with infinite exertion—
a roof I can't live under?
—All those blueprints,
closings of gaps,
measurings, calculations?
A life I didn't choose
chose me: even
my tools are the wrong ones
for what I have to do.
I'm naked, ignorant,
a naked man fleeing
across the roofs
who could with a shade of difference
be sitting in the lamplight
against the cream wallpaper
reading—not with indifference—
about a naked man
fleeing across the roofs.”
― Adrienne Rich, Poems: Selected and New, 1950-1974