suffering

Rich championed just about every major liberal social cause of our time—​human rights, gay rights, feminism, and environmental reform. Sometimes Later Poems: Selected and New, 1971–​2012 reads like a diary of them.

“When they came to camp, they asked my friend Abdi
if he was ready to join the militia. He said, no.

In the placid lean of an arid summer, in the lingering
snarl of pit latrines, the sharp barbs of the acacia,
in the opaque eyes of the girl whose fingers frenzy

My alarm went off, and I lay in bed listening to the weather and news. It was September 11, 2001—an ordinary day, a workday, one of those early fall days that Minnesotans look back at longingly from winter’s chill. I went downstairs, switched on the radio in the kitchen, and sat down to breakfast with the newspaper. Shortly before eight, the newscaster said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center in New York.