"Your mind now, mouldering like wedding-cake / heavy with useless experience, rich / with suspicion, rumor, fantasy, / crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge / of mere fact."
— Rich, Adrienne (1929-2012)
Author
Place of Publication
New York
Publisher
Harper & Row
Date
1963
Metaphor
"Your mind now, mouldering like wedding-cake / heavy with useless experience, rich / with suspicion, rumor, fantasy, / crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge / of mere fact."
Metaphor in Context
You, once a belle in Shreveport,
with henna-colored hair, skin like a peachbud,
still have your dresses copied from that time.
and play a Chopin prelude
called by Cortot: "Delicious recollections
float like perfume through the memory."
Your mind now, mouldering like wedding-cake
heavy with useless experience, rich
with suspicion, rumor, fantasy,
crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge
of mere fact. In the prime of your life.
(p. 23)
with henna-colored hair, skin like a peachbud,
still have your dresses copied from that time.
and play a Chopin prelude
called by Cortot: "Delicious recollections
float like perfume through the memory."
Your mind now, mouldering like wedding-cake
heavy with useless experience, rich
with suspicion, rumor, fantasy,
crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge
of mere fact. In the prime of your life.
(p. 23)
Categories
Provenance
Reading Rich's obituary in The New York Times <Link to NYTimes.com>
Citation
Adrienne Rich, Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (New York: Harper & Row, 1963).
Date of Entry
03/29/2012
