roofwalker

The Roofwalker
by Adrienne Rich (1961)
for Denise Levertov
Over the half-finished houses
night comes. The builders
stand on the roof. It is
quiet after the hammers,
the pulleys hang slack.
Giants, the roofwalkers,
on a listing deck, the wave
of darkness about to break
on their heads. The sky
is a torn sail where figures
pass magnified, shadows
on a burning deck.
I feel like them up there:
exposed, larger than life,
and due to bceak my neck.
Was it worth while to lay--
with infinite exertion--
a roof I can't live under?
--All those blueprints,
closings of gaps
measurings, calculations?
A life I didn't choose
chose me: even my tools are the wrong ones
for what I have to do.
I'm naked, ignorant,
a naked man fleeing
across the roofs
who could with a shade of difference
be sitting in the lamplight
against the cream wallpaper
reading--not with indifference--
about a naked man
fleeing across the roofs.
Rich, Adrienne. "The Roofwalker." Poems: Selected and New, 1950-1974. New York: Norton, 1974.
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