The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010

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The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 Page 7

by Lucille Clifton


  a changed changer

  i continue to continue

  where i have been

  most of my lives is

  where i’m going

  the poet

  i beg my bones to be good but

  they keep clicking music and

  i spin in the center of myself

  a foolish frightful woman

  moving my skin against the wind and

  tap dancing for my life.

  turning

  turning into my own

  turning on in

  to my own self

  at last

  turning out of the

  white cage, turning out of the

  lady cage

  turning at last

  on a stem like a black fruit

  in my own season

  at last

  my poem

  a love person

  from love people

  out of the afrikan sun

  under the sign of cancer.

  whoever see my

  midnight smile

  seeing star apple and

  mango from home.

  whoever take me for

  a negative thing,

  his death be on him

  like a skin

  and his skin

  be his heart’s revenge.

  lucy one-eye

  she got her mama’s ways.

  big round roller

  can’t cook

  can’t clean

  if that’s what you want

  you got it world.

  lucy one-eye

  she see the world sideways.

  word foolish

  she say what she don’t want

  to say, she don’t say

  what she want to.

  lucy one-eye

  she won’t walk away

  from it.

  she’ll keep on trying

  with her crooked look

  and her wrinkled ways,

  the darling girl.

  if mama

  could see

  she would see

  lucy sprawling

  limbs of lucy

  decorating the

  backs of chairs

  lucy hair

  holding the mirrors up

  that reflect odd

  aspects of lucy.

  if mama

  could hear

  she would hear

  lucysong rolled in the

  corners like lint

  exotic webs of lucysighs

  long lucy spiders explaining

  to obscure gods.

  if mama

  could talk

  she would talk

  good girl

  good girl

  good girl

  clean up your room.

  i was born in a hotel,

  a maskmaker.

  my bones were knit by

  a perilous knife.

  my skin turned around

  at midnight and

  i entered the earth in

  a woman jar.

  i learned the world all

  wormside up

  and this is my yes

  my strong fingers;

  i was born in a bed of

  good lessons

  and it has made me

  wise.

  light

  on my mother’s tongue

  breaks through her soft

  extravagant hip

  into life.

  lucille

  she calls the light,

  which was the name

  of the grandmother

  who waited by the crossroads

  in virginia

  and shot the whiteman off his horse,

  killing the killer of sons.

  light breaks from her life

  to her lives . . .

  mine already is

  an afrikan name.

  cutting greens

  curling them around

  i hold their bodies in obscene embrace

  thinking of everything but kinship.

  collards and kale

  strain against each strange other

  away from my kissmaking hand and

  the iron bedpot.

  the pot is black,

  the cutting board is black,

  my hand,

  and just for a minute

  the greens roll black under the knife,

  and the kitchen twists dark on its spine

  and i taste in my natural appetite

  the bond of live things everywhere.

  jackie robinson

  ran against walls

  without breaking.

  in night games

  was not foul

  but, brave as a hit

  over whitestone fences,

  entered the conquering dark.

  i went to the valley

  but i didn’t go to stay

  i stand on my father’s ground

  not breaking.

  it holds me up

  like a hand my father pushes.

  virginia.

  i am in virginia,

  the magic word

  rocked in my father’s box

  like heaven,

  the magic line in my hand. but

  where is the afrika in this?

  except, the grass is green,

  is greener he would say.

  and the sky opens a better blue

  and in the historical museum

  where the slaves

  are still hidden away like knives

  i find a paper with a name i know.

  his name.

  their name.

  sayles.

  the name he loved.

  i stand on my father’s ground

  not breaking.

  there is an afrikan in this

  and whose ever name it has been,

  the blood is mine.

  my soul got happy

  and i stayed all day.

  at last we killed the roaches.

  mama and me. she sprayed,

  i swept the ceiling and they fell

  dying onto our shoulders, in our hair

  covering us with red. the tribe was broken,

  the cooking pots were ours again

  and we were glad, such cleanliness was grace

  when i was twelve. only for a few nights,

  and then not much, my dreams were blood

  my hands were blades and it was murder murder

  all over the place.

  in the evenings

  i go through my rooms

  like a witch watchman

  mad as my mother was for

  rattling knobs and

  tapping glass. ah, lady,

  i can see you now,

  our personal nurse,

  placing the iron

  wrapped in rags

  near our cold toes.

  you are thawed places and

  safe walls to me as i walk

  the same sentry,

  ironing the winters warm and

  shaking locks in the night

  like a ghost.

  breaklight

  light keeps on breaking.

  i keep knowing

  the language of other nations.

  i keep hearing

  tree talk

  water words

  and i keep knowing what they mean.

  and light just keeps on breaking.

  last night

  the fears of my mother came

  knocking and when i

  opened the door

  they tried to explain themselves

  and i understood

  everything they said.

  some dreams hang in the air

  like smoke. some dreams

  get all in your clothes and

  be wearing them more than you do and

  you be half the time trying to

  hold them and half the time

  trying to wave them away.

  t
heir smell be all over you and

  they get to your eyes and

  you cry. the fire be gone

  and the wood but some dreams

  hang in the air like smoke

  touching everything.

  the carver

  for fred

  sees the man

  in the wood and

  calls his name and

  the man in the wood

  breaks through the bark and

  the nations of wood call

  the carver

  Brother

  let there be new flowering

  in the fields let the fields

  turn mellow for the men

  let the men keep tender

  through the time let the time

  be wrested from the war

  let the war be won

  let love be

  at the end

  the thirty eighth year

  of my life,

  plain as bread

  round as a cake

  an ordinary woman.

  an ordinary woman.

  i had expected to be

  smaller than this,

  more beautiful,

  wiser in afrikan ways,

  more confident,

  i had expected

  more than this.

  i will be forty soon.

  my mother once was forty.

  my mother died at forty four,

  a woman of sad countenance

  leaving behind a girl

  awkward as a stork.

  my mother was thick,

  her hair was a jungle and

  she was very wise

  and beautiful

  and sad.

  i have dreamed dreams

  for you mama

  more than once.

  i have wrapped me

  in your skin

  and made you live again

  more than once.

  i have taken the bones you hardened

  and built daughters

  and they blossom and promise fruit

  like afrikan trees.

  i am a woman now.

  an ordinary woman.

  in the thirty eighth

  year of my life,

  surrounded by life,

  a perfect picture of

  blackness blessed,

  i had not expected this

  loneliness.

  if it is western,

  if it is the final

  europe in my mind,

  if in the middle of my life

  i am turning the final turn

  into the shining dark

  let me come to it whole

  and holy

  not afraid

  not lonely

  out of my mother’s life

  into my own.

  into my own.

  i had expected more than this.

  i had not expected to be

  an ordinary woman.

  Uncollected Poems

  (ca. 1975)

  Anniversary

  5/10/74

  sixteen years

  by the white of my hair

  by my wide bones

  by the life that ran out of me

  into life,

  sixteen years

  and the girl is gone

  with her two good eyes;

  she was always hoping something,

  she was afraid of everything.

  little is left of her who hid

  behind bread and babies

  only something thin and

  bright as a flame,

  it has no language it can speak

  without burning

  it has no other house to run to

  it loves you loves you loves you.

  November 1, 1975

  My mother is white bones

  in a weed field

  on her birthday.

  She who would be sixty

  has been sixteen years

  absent at celebrations.

  For sixteen years of minutes

  she has been what is missing.

  This is just to note

  the arrogance of days

  continuing to happen

  as if she were here.

  “We Do Not Know Very Much About Lucille’s Inner Life”

  from the light of her inner life

  a company of citizens

  watches lucille as she trembles

  through the world.

  she is a tired woman though

  well meaning, they say.

  when will she learn to listen to us?

  lucille things are not what they seem.

  all all is wonder and

  astonishment.

  two-headed woman

  (1980)

  for elaine and eileen

  who listen

  homage to mine

  lucy and her girls

  lucy is the ocean

  extended by

  her girls

  are the river

  fed by

  lucy

  is the sun

  reflected through

  her girls

  are the moon

  lighted by

  lucy

  is the history of

  her girls

  are the place where

  lucy

  was going

  i was born with twelve fingers

  like my mother and my daughter.

  each of us

  born wearing strange black gloves

  extra baby fingers hanging over the sides of our cribs and

  dipping into the milk.

  somebody was afraid we would learn to cast spells

  and our wonders were cut off

  but they didn’t understand

  the powerful memories of ghosts. now

  we take what we want

  with invisible fingers

  and we connect

  my dead mother my live daughter and me

  through our terrible shadowy hands.

  homage to my hair

  when i feel her jump up and dance

  i hear the music! my God

  i’m talking about my nappy hair!

  she is a challenge to your hand

  black man,

  she is as tasty on your tongue as good greens

  black man,

  she can touch your mind

  with her electric fingers and

  the grayer she do get, good God,

  the blacker she do be!

  homage to my hips

  these hips are big hips

  they need space to

  move around in.

  the don’t fit into little

  petty places. these hips

  are free hips.

  they don’t like to be held back.

  these hips have never been enslaved,

  they go where they want to go

  they do what they want to do.

  these hips are mighty hips.

  these hips are magic hips.

  i have known them

  to put a spell on a man and

  spin him like a top!

  what the mirror said

  listen,

  you a wonder.

  you a city

  of a woman.

  you got a geography

  of your own.

  listen,

  somebody need a map

  to understand you.

  somebody need directions

  to move around you.

  listen,

  woman,

  you not a noplace

  anonymous

  girl;

  mister with his hands on you

  he got his hands on

  some

  damn

  body!

  there is a girl inside.

  she is randy as a wolf.

  she will not walk away

  and leave these bones

  to an old woman.

  she is a green tree

  in a fore
st of kindling.

  she is a green girl

  in a used poet.

  she has waited

  patient as a nun

  for the second coming,

  when she can break through gray hairs

  into blossom

  and her lovers will harvest

  honey and thyme

  and the woods will be wild

  with the damn wonder of it.

  to merle

  say skinny manysided tall on the ball

  brown downtown woman

  last time i saw you was on the corner of

  pyramid and sphinx.

  ten thousand years have interrupted our conversation

  but I have kept most of my words

  till you came back.

  what i’m trying to say is

  i recognize your language and

  let me call you sister, sister,

  i been waiting for you.

  august the 12th

  for sam

  we are two scars on a dead woman’s belly

  brother, cut from the same knife

  you and me. today is your birthday.

  where are you? my hair

  is crying for her brother.

  myself with a mustache

  empties the mirror on our mother’s table

  and all the phones in august wait.

  today is your birthday, call us.

  tell us where you are,

  tell us why you are silent now.

  on the death of allen’s son

  a certain man had seven sons.

  who can fill the space that

  one space makes?

  young friend, young enemy who bloomed

 

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