The prophetic words of poet Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich (1929 to 2012) was a poet, an activist and a feminist. The following poem, although written in 1991, perfectly describes to me the frustration, the shame and the sense of loss that I feel our country is experiencing today..

“WHAT KIND OF TIMES ARE THESE”

“There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off in to shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled,
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here, our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods meeting the unmarked strip of light --
ghost-ridden crossroads, leaf mold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times
like these to have you listen at all, It’s necessary
to talk about trees.”