On feminism: “It's a point of view; it's a stance; it's an attitude towards life that affects, and afflicts, everything I do.”

I'm sitting on a bench at One Hundred and Fifteenth
and Riverside Drive, with my books beside me,
early for my lesson in Chinese

My dear, you moved so rapidly through my life
I see you as a ghostly blur;
You are the subject, I the ornament

At seventeen I’ve come to read a poem
At Princeton. Now my young hosts inquire
If I would like to meet Professor Einstein.
But I’m too conscious I have nothing to say

Down the long curving walk you trudge to the street,
Stoop-shouldered in defeat, a cardboard suitcase
In each hand. Gerda, don’t leave! the child cries

Saturday noon: the morning of the mind 
Moves through a mist to breakfast: damp from sleep, 
Rustic and rude, the partial self comes down