As much as it is for our ‘place’, The Minot Voice was equally developed as a platform to elevate that which is remarkable — especially in the form of performance or creation. What you experience below is all of this and more. It was sourced from Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings where she provides much deeper context on the poem and author; if this type of content interests you, follow the link, join the email list, make a contribution to sustain the work.
This is a reading of Adrienne Rich’s poem Hubble Photographs: After Sappho. The reading is by Amanda Palmer.
HUBBLE PHOTOGRAPHS: AFTER SAPPHO
by Adrienne Rich (2005)
It should be the most desired sight of all
the person with whom you hope to live and die
walking into a room, turning to look at you, sight for sight
Should be yet I say there is something
more desirable: the ex-stasis of galaxies
so out from us there’s no vocabulary
but mathematics and optics
equations letting sight pierce through time
into liberations, lacerations of light and dust
exposed like a body’s cavity, violet green livid and venous, gorgeous
—beyond good and evil as ever stained into dream
beyond remorse, disillusion, fear of death
or life, rage
for order, rage for destruction
beyond this love which stirs
the air every time she walks into the room
These impersonae, however we call them
won’t invade us as on movie screens
they are so old, so new, we are not to them
we look at them or don’t from within the milky gauze
of our tilted gazing
but they don’t look back and we cannot hurt them
