Adrienne Rich(b. 1929)
Sonnet 1: "Memory lifts her smoky mirror: 1943"
Memory lifts her smoky mirror: 1943,
single isinglass window kerosene
stove in the streetcar barn halfset moon
8:15 a.m. Eastern War Time dark
Number 29 clanging in and turning
looseleaf notebook Latin for Americans
Breasted's History of the Ancient World
on the girl's lap
money for lunch and war-stamps in her pocket
darkblue wool wet acrid on her hands
three pools of light weak ceiling bulbs
a schoolgirl's hope-spilt terrified
sensations wired to smells
of kerosene wool and snow
and the sound of the dead language
praised as key torchlight of the great dead
Grey spreading behind still-flying snow
the lean and sway of the streetcar she must ride
to become one of a hundred girls
rising white-cuffed and collared in a study hall
to sing For those in -peril on the sea*
under plaster casts of the classic frescoes
chariots horses draperies certitudes.