Rita Dove is an American poet born in Akron, Ohio in 1952. She graduated at the top of her class from Miami University and received her masters from the University of Iowa. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Germany. She taught creative writing at Arizona State University until 1989 when she began teaching at the University of Virginia. In 1987, she won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She has published 8 collections of poetry, a play, a novel, and a short story collection.
Lost Brilliance
I miss that corridor drenched in shadow,
sweat of centuries steeped into stone.
After the plunge, after my shrieks
had diminished and his oars sighed
up to the smoking shore,
the bulwark's gray pallor soothed me.
Even the columns seemed kind, their musky sheen
like the lustrous skin of a roving eye.
I used to stand at the top of the stair
where the carpet flung down
its extravagant heart. Flames
teased the lake into glimmering licks.
I could pretend to be above the earth
rather than underground: a Venetian
palazzo or misty chalet tucked into
an Alp, that mixture of comfort
and gloom...nothing was simpler
to imagine. But it was more difficult
each evening to descend: all that marble
flayed with the red plush of privilege
I traveled on, slow nautilus
unwinding in terrified splendor
to where he knew to meet me--
my consort, my match
though much older and sadder.
In time, I lost the capacity
for resolve. It was as if
I had been traveling all these years
without a body,
until his hands found me--
and then there was just
the two of us forever:
one who wounded,
and one who served.
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