poem for the week

from An Atlas of the Difficult World by Adrienne Rich

II

Here is a map of our country:
here is the Sea of Indifference, glazed with salt
This is the haunted river flowing from brow to groin
we dare not taste its water
This is the desert where missiles are planted like corms
This is the breadbasket of foreclosed farms
This is the birthplace of the rockabilly boy
This is the cemetery of the poor
who died for democracy........This is a battlefield
from a nineteenth-century war......the shrine is famous
This is the sea-town of myth and story........when the fishing fleets
went bankrupt....here is where the jobs were........on the pier
processing frozen fishsticks.....hourly wages and no shares
These are other battlefields...Centralia....Detroit
here are the forests primeval...the copper....the silver loads
These are the suburbs of acquaintance.....silence rising fumelike from the streets
This is the capital of money and dolor whose spires
flare up through air inversions whose bridges are crumbling
whose children are drifting blind alleys pent
between coiled rolls of razor wire
I promised to show you a map you say but this is a mural
then yes let it be....these are small distinctions
where do we see it from is the question