Muriel Rukeyser Poems

In the cave with a long-ago flare
a woman stands, her arms up. Red twig, black twig, brown twig.
A wall of leaping darkness over her.
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This is the cripple’s hour on Seventh Avenue
when they emerge, the two o’clock night-walkers,
the cane, the crutch, and the black suit.
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There were three of them that night.
They wanted it to happen in the first woman’s room.
The man called her; the phone rang high.
Then she put fresh lipstick on.
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These roads will take you into your own country.
Seasons and maps coming where this road comes
into a landscape mirrored in these men.
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This is a lung disease. Silicate dust makes it.
The dust causing the growth of

This is the X-ray picture taken last April.
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Make and be eaten, the poet says,
Lie in the arms of nightlong fire,
To celebrate the waking, wake.
Burn in the daylong light; and praise
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The night is covered with signs. The body and face of man,
with signs, and his journeys. Where the rock is split
and speaks to the water; the flame speaks to the cloud;
the red splatter, abstraction, on the door
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I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
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Do you know the name of the average animal?
Not the dog,
Not the green-beaded frog,
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I first discovered what was killing these men.
I had three sons who worked with their father in the tunnel:
Cecil, aged 23, Owen, aged 21, Shirley, aged 17.
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