AP Success - AP English Literature Poetry Analysis: "Storm Warnings"

Storm Warnings by Adrienne Rich

The glass has been falling all the afternoon,

And knowing better than the instrument

5

What winds are walking overhead, what zone

Of gray unrest is moving across the land,

I leave the book on a pillowed chair

And walk from window to closed window, watching

Boughs strain against the sky

10

And think again, as often when the air

‘Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting,

How with a single purpose time has traveled

By secret currents of the undiscerned

15

‘Into this polar realm. Weather abroad

And weather in the heart alike come on

Regardless of prediction.

Between foreseeing and averting change

20

Lies all the mastery of elements

Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter.

Time in the hand is not control of time,

Nor shattered fragments of an instrument

A proof against the wind; the wind will rise,

25

We can only close the shutters.

I draw the curtains as the sky goes black

And set a match to candles sheathed in glass

Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine

30

Of weather through the unsealed aperture.

This is our sole defense against the season;

These are the things that we have learned to do

Who live in troubled regions.