sometimes I even found it

My first lessons were kisses and a hammer.
I was fed with mother's milk and rat poison.
I learned to walk on a tightrope over a pit
where snakes' warnings were my rattles.

The night I was born the sky burned red
over Detroit and sirens sharpened their knives.
The elms made tents of solace over grimy
streets and alley cats purred me to sleep.

I dived into books and their fables
closed over my head and hid me.
Libraries were my cathedrals. Librarians
my priests promising salvation.

I was formed by beating like a black
smith's sword, and my edge is still
sharp enough to cut both you and me.
I sought love in dark and dusty corners

and sometimes I even found it
however briefly. Every harsh, every
tender word entered my flesh and lives
there still, bacteria inside my gut.

I suckled Detroit's steel tits. When
I escaped to college I carried it with
me, shadow and voice, pressure
that hardened me to coal and flame.

[Marge Piercy {1936- }, 'Made in Detroit' from Made in Detroit]