June 20, 2026

I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that still prevail.

Rich wrote this poem in 1973, during a period when she was reckoning openly with the cost of living inside structures — marriage, motherhood, literary culture — that had been built without women's full humanity in mind. The poem is not about rage or escape. It is about going down deliberately, with equipment, to look at what is actually there. Equanimity, for Rich, was not peace at any price — it was the steadiness required to see clearly without flinching, and then to come back up.