Adrienne Rich - Poetry: I lyrics

Someone at a table under a brown metal lamp is studying the history of poetry. Someone in the library at closing-time has learned to say modernism, trope, vatic, text. She is listening for shreds of music. He is searching for his name back in the old country. They cannot learn without teachers. They are like uswhat we were if you remember. In a corner of night a voice is crying in a kind of whisper: More! Can you rememberwhen we thought the poets taughthow to live? That is not the voice of a critic nor a common reader it is someone youngin anger hardly knowing what to ask who finds our linesour glosses wantingin this world.