“I Am in Danger—Sir—” by Adrienne Rich
“Half-cracked” to Higginson, living,
afterward famous in garbled versions,
your hoard of dazzling scraps a battlefield,
now your old snood
mothballed at Harvard
and you in your variorum monument
equivocal to the end—
who are you?
you, woman, masculine
in single-mindedness,
for whom the word was more
than a symptom—
a condition of being.
Till the air buzzing with spoiled language
sang in your ears
of Perjury
and in your half-cracked way you chose
silence for entertainment,
chose to have it out at last
on your own premises.
