Modotti
by
Adrienne Rich
Your footprints of light on sensitive paper
that typewriter you made famous
my footsteps following you up stair-
wells of scarred oak and shredded newsprint
these windowpanes smeared with stifled breaths
corridors of tile and jaundiced plaster
if this is where I must look for you
then this is where I’ll find you
From a streetlamp’s wet lozenge bent
on a curb plastered with newsprint
the headlines aiming straight at your eyes
to a room’s dark breath-smeared light
these footsteps I’m following you with
down tiles of a red corridor
if this is a way to find you
of course this is how I’ll find you.
Your negatives pegged to dry in a darkroom
rigged up over a bathtub’s lozenge
your footprints of light on sensitive paper
stacked curling under blackened panes
the always upstairs of your hideout
the stern exposure of your brows
— these footsteps I’m following you with
aren’t to arrest you
The bristling hairs of your eyeflash
that typewriter you made famous
your enormous will to arrest and frame
what was, what is, still liquid, flowing
your exposure of manifestos, your
lightbulb in a scarred ceiling
well if this is how I find you
Modotti so I find you
In the red wash of your darkroom
from your neighborhood of volcanoes
to the geranium nailed in a can
on the wall of your upstairs hideout
in the rush of breath a window
of revolution allowed you
on this jaundiced stair in this huge lashed eye
these
footsteps I’m following you with
Tina Modotti
(1896 – 1942): Photographer, political activist, revolutionary. Her
most significant artistic work was done in Mexico in the 1920s, including
a study of the typewriter belonging to her lover, the Cuban revolutionary
Julio Antonio Mella. Framed for his murder by the fascists in 1929, she
was expelled from Mexico in 1930. After some years of political activity
in Berlin, the Soviet Union and Spain, she returned incognito to Mexico
where she died in 1942.
© 1996 by Adrienne Rich
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