[Kätzchen]

I have written lots of poems, the past few years, but lately, while having so much time on my hands, I found myself rearranging books I've kept, over the years. I came across a much loved literature studies book, found myself rereading portions of literature; then turned a page to find the poem written by Adrienne Rich. It's one of few poems that I absolutely love: Love, because it's rich with timeless wisdom, and an certain depth of agony, that I've known one or two times in life. Not something I think anyone should experience, but life often is the subtle teacher .... especially as seen and felt through the lens of Adrienne Rich.

Diving into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife blade,
I put on
(5) The body armor of black rubber,
the absurd flippers,
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this,
Not like Cousteau with his
(10) Assiduous team,
aboard the sun flooded schooner,
but here alone.

There is a ladder,
the ladder is always there
(15) hanging innocently
Close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
(20) it's a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down
Rung after rung and still
The oxygen immerses me
(25) The blue light
The clear atoms
Of our human air.
I go down
my flippers cripple me
(30) I crawl like an insect down the ladder
And there is no one
To tell me when the ocean will begin.

First the air is blue and then
(35) it is bluer and then green and then
Black. I am blacking out and yet
My mask is powerful
It pumps my blood with power
The sea is another story.
(40) The sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
To turn my body without force
In the deep element.

And now: it is not easy to forget
(45) What I came for
Among so many who have always
Lived here
Swaying their crenellated fans
Between the reefs
(50) and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
the words are purposes,
the words are maps.
(55) I came to see the damage that was done
And the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
Slowly along the flank
of something more permanent,
(60) than fish or weed.

The thing I came for
The wreck and not the story of the wreck.
the thing itself and not the myth.
The drowned face always staring
(65) Toward the sun.
the evidence of damage,
Worn by salt and sway into threadbare beauty.
the ribs of the disaster
Curving their assertion,
(70) Among the tentative haunters.

This is the place
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
Streams black, the merman in his armored body,
We circle silently,
(75) about the wreck,
we dive into the hold.
I am She: I am He.

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes,
whose beasts still bear the stress,
(80) whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
Obscure inside barrels
Half wedged and left to rot
we are the half destroyed instruments
That once held to a course,
(85) the water eaten log
The fouled compass.

We are, I am, you are
By cowardice or courage
The one who find our way
(90) back to the scene
Carrying a knife, a camera,
a book of myths
In which
our names do not appear.


~~~ Adrienne Rich (1972).