In Those Years

In those years, people will say,
we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and yes that was the only life
we could bear witness to

But the great dark birds of history
screamed and plunged
into our personal weather

They were headed somewhere else
but their beaks and pinions drove along the shore
through the rags of fog
where we stood,
saying I

Adrienne Rich, 1991