February/March Poet: Adrienne Rich

From Atlas of a Difficult World by Adrienne Rich

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Soledad. = f. Solitude, loneliness, homesickness; lonely retreat
Winter sun in the rosetrees.
An old Mexican with a white moustache prunes them back
           spraying
the cut branches with dormant oil.     The old paper-bag-brown
           adobe walls
stretch apart from the rebuilt mission, in their own time.     It is
           lonely here
in the curve of the road winding through vast brown fields
          machine-engraved in furrows
of relentless precision.     In the small chapel
La Nuestra Senora de la Soledad dwells in her shallow arch
painted on either side with columns.     She is in black lace crisp
           as cinders
from head to foot.     Alone, solitary, homesick
in her lonely retreat.     Outside black olives fall and smash
littering and staining the beaten path.     The gravestones of the
           padres
are weights pressing down on the Indian artisans.     It is the sixth
           day of another war