Only to have a grief
equal to all these tears!
There’s not a sob in my chest.
Dry-hearted as Peer Gynt
I pare away, no hero,
merely a cook.
Crying was labor, once
when I’d good cause.
Walking, I felt my eyes like wounds
raw in my head,
so postal-clerks, I thought, must stare.
A dog’s look, a cat’s, burnt to my brain–
yet all that stayed
stuff in my lungs like smog.
These old tears in the chopping-bowl.
Adrienne Rich.
