Sleepwalking Next To Death - Adrienne Rich

Sleep     horns of a snail 
                                         protruding, retracting
What we choose to know
                                           or not know
                                                                 all these years
sleepwalking
                        next to death
I 

This snail could have been eaten 
This snail could have been crushed
This snail could have dreamed it was a painter or a poet
This snail could have driven fast at night
putting up graffiti with a spray-gun:

This snail could have ridden
in the back of the pick-up, handling guns

II

Knows, chooses not to know
                                                 It has always
been about death and chances
                                                  The Dutch artist wrote and painted 
one or more strange and usable things
For I mean to meet you
in any land     in any language
This is my promise:
I will be there
if you are there

III

In between this and that there are different places
of waiting, airports mostly where the air
is hungover, visibility low     boarding passes not guaranteed
If you wrote me, I sat next to Naomi
I would read that, someone who felt like Ruth 
I would begin reading you like a dream
That's how extreme it feels
                                              that's what I have to do

IV

Every stone around your neck you know the reason for
at this time in your life      Relentlessly
you tell me their names and furiously I
forget their names    Forgetting the names of the stones
you love, you lover of stones
what is it I do?

V

What is it I do? I refuse to take your place 
in the world    I refuse to make myself
your courier   I refuse so much
I might ask, what is it I do?
I will not be the dreamer for whom 
you are the only dream
I will not be your channel
I will wrestle you to the end
for our difference (as you have wrestled me)
I will change your name and confuse
the Angel

VI

I am stupid with you and practical with you
I remind you to take a poultice    forget a quarrel
I am a snail in the back of the pick-up handling you
vitamins you hate to take

VII

Calmly you look over my shoulder    at this page    and say 
It's all about you    None of this 
tells my story 

VIII

Yesterday noon I stood by a river
and many waited to cross over
from the Juarez barrio
                                        to El Paso del Norte 
First day of spring     a strand of trees
in Mexico were the palegreen leaf
a man casting a net
                                  into the Rio Grande
and women, in pairs, strolling 
                                                    across the border
as if taking a simple walk
                                             Many thousands go

I stood by the river and thought of you 
young     in Mexico     in a time of hope

IX

The practical nurse is the only nurse
with her plastic valise of poultices and salves 
her hands of glove leather and ebony
her ledgers of pain
The practical nurse goes down to the river
in her runover shoes and her dollar necklace
eating a burrito in hand
                                           it will be a long day
a long labor
                       the midwife will be glad to see her
it will be a long night     someone bleeding
from a botched abortion      a beating    Will you let her touch you 
                                now?
Will you tell her you're fine?

X

I'm afraid of the border patrol
                                                   Not those men
of  La Migra who could have run us
into the irrigation canal with their van
                                                                 I'm afraid 
of the patrollers
the sleepwaker in me 
                                        the loner in you 

XI

I want five hours with you
in a train running south 
                                          maybe ten hours
In a Greyhound bound for the border
the two seats side-by-side that become a home
an island of light in the continental dark
the time that takes the place of a lifetime
I promise I won't fall asleep when the lights go down
I will not be lulled 
Promise you won't jump the train 
vanish into the bus depot at three a.m.
that you won't defect
                                       that we'll travel
like two snails
                           our four horns erect. 



[From:
Rich, A. (1989) Time's power: poems 1985-1988. New York: Norton. p17 - p21 ]

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