Combination Poem

A Mind Divided Searches

I have gone out, a possessed witch
haunting the black air, braver at night
Shadows grew in my veins, my bright belief,
my head of dreams deeper than night and sleep

I have been her kind
Inadequate to love,
Supposes she’s enough

And the girl, the wellborn, goddess, human love--
young-known, new-knowing, mouth flickering, sure eyes--
you who have your own light,
who are to yourself a presence,
who need no presence

Pillar of white in a blackout of knives,
I have been her kind

My mind is quite divided

Has sickness, sickness. Introspective and whole,

She knows how several madnesses are born
Stasis in darkness

This is the room I have never been in
This is the room I could never breathe in

He looks into his mirror, loves himself--
with his whole soul.

Often this love has oppressed me;
But clouds of joys untried do cloak aspiring minds

Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other

I have been her kind

Searching my reaches for what she really is.
every gesture is wisdom
nothing is lost.

Hilda Dolittle
Muriel Rukeyser
Gwendolyn Brooks
Queen Elizabeth I
Sylvia Plath
Anne Sexton