Poem Comparison: Adrienne Rich's Prospective Immigrants Please Note and Bruce Ignacio's Lost

“Prospective Immigrants Please Note” By Adrienne Rich Either you will go through this door or you will not go through. If you go through there is always the risk of remembering your name. Things look at you doubly and you must look back and let them happen. If you do not go through it is possible to live worthily to maintain your attitudes to hold your position to die bravely but much will blind you, much will evade you, at what cost who knows? The door itself makes no promises.
It is only a door.

“Lost” By Bruce Ignacio I know not of my forefathers nor of their beliefs For I was brought up in the city. Our home seemed smothered and surrounded as were other homes on city sites. When the rain came I would slush my way to school as though the street were a wading pool. Those streets were always crowded. I brushed by people with every step, Covered my nose once in awhile, Gasping against the smell of perspiration on humid days. Lights flashed everywhere until my head became a signal, flashing on and off. Noise so unbearable I wished the whole place would come to a standstill, leaving only peace and quiet
And still, would I like this kind of life? . . .
The life of my forefathers who wandered, not knowing where they were going, but just moving, further and further from where they had been,
To be in quiet, to kind of be lost in