Muriel Rukeyser -- Effort at Speech Between Two People

I am not sure how I first discovered the work of Muriel Rukeyser - probably through her wonderful Life of Poetry (which reminds me - it's time to re-read that...again), and then to the poetry. The best place to start looking at her poetic work is probably the Adrienne Rich-edited Selected Poems from the Library of America's American Poets Project Series. It's also difficult not to think about Rich herself as she speaks about Rukeyser's "claiming her right to intellect and sexuality, poetry and science, Marxism and myth, activism and motherhood, theory and vision..."

Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980)

Effort at Speech Between Two People

:  Speak to me.   Take my hand.   What are you now?

   I will tell you all.   I will conceal nothing.

   When I was three, a little child read a story about a

         rabbit 

   who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair   : 

   a pink rabbit   :   it was my birthday, and a candle

   burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be 

         happy.

:   Oh, grow to know me.    I am not happy.    I will be

         open: 

   Now I am thinking of white sails against a sky like

         music, 
   like glad horns blowing, and birds tilting, and an arm

         about me. 
   There was one I loved, who wanted to live, sailing.

 :  Speak to me.   Take my hand.   What are you now? 
   When I was nine, I was fruitily sentimental, 
   fluid   :    and my widowed aunt played Chopin, 
   and I bent my head to the painted woodwork, and wept. 
   I want now to be close to you.   I would 
   link the minutes of my days close, somehow, to your

         days.

 :  I am not happy.   I will be open. 

    I have liked lamps in evening corners, and quiet

         poems. 
   There has been fear in my life.   Sometimes I

         speculate 
   On what a tragedy his life was, really.

 :  Take my hand.    Fist my mind in your hand.   What

         are you now? 
   When I was fourteen, I had dreams of suicide, 
   and I stood at a steep window, at sunset, hoping

         toward death    :
   if the light had not melted clouds and plains to

         beauty, 
   if light had not transformed that day, I would have

         leapt. 
   I am unhappy. I am lonely. Speak to me.

 :  I will be open.    I think he never loved me: 
   he loved the bright beaches, the little lips of foam 
   that ride small waves, he loved the veer of gulls: 
   he said with a gay mouth: I love you.   Grow to

         know me.

 :  What are you now?   If we could touch one another, 
     if these our separate entities could come to grips, 
   clenched like a Chinese puzzle . . . yesterday 
   I stood in a crowded street that was live with people, 
   and no one spoke a word, and the morning shone. 
   Everyone silent, moving . . . Take my hand.

         Speak to me.