With no extraordinary power

I wasn't looking for a poem. I was gathering pieces, making a word bank, trying to write my own. But instead, I found this poem. Today as the world feels so ugly with division, these lines seem just right, just now, timeless. 

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed

I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely, 

with no extraordinary power, 
reconstitute the world. 

— Adrienne Rich

This is the last stanza of Natural Resources, a poem by Adrienne Rich that appears in the collection, The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950 - 1984. This is an excellent book. My copy, now over 20 years old, is dog-eared and falling apart. I return to the pages again and again, with new appreciation of an old friend, a firm foundation.