We are against war and the sources of war. We are for poetry and the sources of poetry. They are everyday, these sources, as the sources of peace are… - Muriel Rukeyser

We are against war and the sources of war.
We are for poetry and the sources of poetry.

I was told by friends, when it was a matter of deciding to go ahead and have a child, that I would have to choose between the child and poetry, and I said no. I was not going to make that choice; I would choose both.

What do you want – a cliff over a city?
A foreland, sloped to sea and overgrown with roses?
These people live here.

When I wrote of the women in their dances and wildness, it was a mask.
on their mountain, god-hunting, singing, in orgy,
it was a mask; when I wrote of the god,
fragmented, exiled from himself, his life, the love gone down
with song,
it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from myself.

There is no mountain, there is no god, there is memory
of my torn life, myself split open in sleep, the rescued child
beside me among the doctors, and a word
of rescue from the great eyes.

No more masks! No more mythologies!

Now, for the first time, the god lifts his hand,
the fragments join in me with their own music.