From “Breaking Open,” by Muriel Rukeyser

Written on the plane. After turbulence:

The movement of life: to live more fully in the present. This

movement includes the work of bringing this history to “light”

and understanding. The “unconscious” of the race, and its traces

in art and in social structure and “inventions”--these are our

inheritance. In facing history, we look at each other, and in facing

our entire personal life, we look at each other.

I want to break open. On the plane, a white cloud seen through

rainbow. The rainbow is, optically, on the glass of the window.

From “Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness,” edited by Carolyn Forche (W.W. Norton: 812 pp., $21.95)