Summary

The speaker describes a place at the end of an old road, close to a house where persecuted people once met. Those people have since disappeared. The speaker is picking mushrooms there; they want to emphasise that this isn’t some far-away country, but their own familiar place which is becoming ruled by misinformation and fear. The country finds ways to get rid of those they don’t like. The speaker won’t specify where this place at the end of the road is, filled with ghosts; they worry that someone will soon make this place disappear too. Yet even though the reader doesn’t know where the speaker is, the speaker hopes that the reader will hear the wisdom in their words and talk about the things that matter.

Analysis

Adrienne Rich’s “What Kind of Times are These” was written as a...