The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010
Page 13
that little she dreams is possible,
that there is only so much
joy to go around, only so much
water. there are no questions
for this, no arguments. she has
to forget to remember the edge
of the sea, they say, to forget
how to swim to the edge, she has
to forget how to feel. the woman
who feels everything sits in her
new house retaining the secret
the desert knew when it walked
up from the ocean, the desert,
so beautiful in her eyes;
water will come again
if you can wait for it.
she feels what the desert feels.
she waits.
photograph
my grandsons
spinning in their joy
universe
keep them turning turning
black blurs against the window
of the world
for they are beautiful
and there is trouble coming
round and round and round
grandma, we are poets
for anpeyo brown
autism: from the Webster’s New Universal Dictionary and the Random House Encyclopedia
in psychology a state of mind
characterized by daydreaming
say rather
i imagined myself
in the place before
language imprisoned itself
in words
by failure to use language normally
say rather that labels
and names rearranged themselves
into description
so that what i saw
i wanted to say
by hallucinations, and ritualistic and repetitive
patterns of behavior
such as excessive rocking and spinning
say rather circling and
circling my mind i am sure i imagined
children without small rooms
imagined young men black and
filled with holes imagined
girls imagined old men penned
imagine actual humans
howling their animal fear
by failure to relate to others
say rather they began
to recede to run back
ward as it were
into a world of words
apartheid hunger war
i could not follow
by disregard of external reality,
withdrawing into a private world
say rather i withdrew
to seek within myself
some small reassurance
that tragedy while vast
is bearable
december 7, 1989
this morning your grandmother
sits in the shadow of
Pearl drinking her coffee.
a sneak attack would find me
where my mother sat that day,
flush against her kitchen table,
her big breasts leaning into
the sugar spill. and it is sweet
to be here in the space between
one horror and another
thinking that history
happens all the time
but is remembered backward
in labels not paragraphs.
and so i claim this day
and offer it
this paragraph i own
to you, peyo, dakotah,
for when you need some
memory, some honey thing
to taste, and call the past.
to my friend, jerina
listen,
when i found there was no safety
in my father’s house
i knew there was none anywhere.
you are right about this,
how i nurtured my work
not my self, how i left the girl
wallowing in her own shame
and took on the flesh of my mother.
but listen,
the girl is rising in me,
not willing to be left to
the silent fingers in the dark,
and you are right,
she is asking for more than
most men are able to give,
but she means to have what she
has earned,
sweet sighs, safe houses,
hands she can trust.
lot’s wife 1988
each of these weeds is a day
i climbed the stair
at 254 purdy street
and looked into a mirror
to see if i was really there.
i was there. i am there
in the thousand days.
the weeds. and these weeds
were 11 harwood place
that daddy bought expecting it
to hold our name forever
against the spin of the world.
our name is spinning away in the wind
blowing across the vacant lots
of buffalo, new york,
that were my girlhood homes.
sayles, i hear them calling, sayles,
we thought we would live forever;
and i look back like lot’s wife
wedded to her weeds and turn to something
surer than salt and write this, yes
i promise, yes we will.
fat fat water rat
imagine the children singing
to a thin woman. imagine
her tight lips, the shadow
and bone of her ass
as she enters this room
and you see her and whisper,
beautiful.
imagine she is myself,
next year perhaps, passing
the now silent children,
entering this room and you,
not recognizing the water rat,
feel your tongue thickening,
everything thickening.
in my dream i swim away from her
as often as toward. in my dream
the children are singing
or silent, it never matters,
and i am of uncertain size
and shape, lying splendid in
a giant’s bed. imagine this room
and me spreading for you my thighs,
my other beautiful things.
poem to my uterus
you uterus
you have been patient
as a sock
while i have slippered into you
my dead and living children
now
they want to cut you out
stocking i will not need
where i am going
where am i going
old girl
without you
uterus
my bloody print
my estrogen kitchen
my black bag of desire
where can i go
barefoot
without you
where can you go
without me
to my last period
well girl, goodbye,
after thirty-eight years.
thirty-eight years and you
never arrived
splendid in your red dress
without trouble for me
somewhere, somehow
now it is done
and i feel just like
the grandmothers who,
after the hussy has gone,
sit holding her photograph
and sighing, wasn’t she
beautiful? wasn’t she beautiful?
wishes for sons
i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
i wish them no 7-11.
i wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
i wish them one week late.
later i wish them hot flashes
wouldn’t believe. let the
flashes come when they
meet someone special.
let the clots come
when they want to.
let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.
the mother’s story
a line of women i don’t know,
she said,
came in and whispered over you
each one fierce word,
she said, each word
more powerful than one before.
and i thought what is this to bring
to one black girl from buffalo
until the last one came and smiled,
she said,
and filled your ear with light
and that, she said, has been the one,
the last one, that last one.
in which i consider the fortunate deaf
the language palpable,
their palm prints folded around
the names of the things.
seasons like skin
snuggled against fingerbone
and their wonder at loving
someone like you perhaps,
even your absence tangible,
your cold name fastened
into their shivering hands.
4/25/89 late
(f. diagnosed w. cancer 4/25/84)
when i awake
the time will have jerked back
into five years ago,
the sea will not be this one,
you will run
under a grayer sky
wearing that green knit cap
we laughed about
and, sweating home again
after your run, all fit
and well and safe, you will
prepare to meet that
stethoscopic group
and hear yourself pronounced
an almost ghost.
as he was dying
a canticle of birds
hovered
watching through the glass
as if to catch
that final breath
and sing it where?
he died.
there was a shattering of wing
that sounded then did not sound,
and we stood in this silence
blackly some would say,
while through the windows,
as perhaps at other times,
the birds, if they had stayed,
could see us,
and i do not mean white here,
but as we are,
transparent women and transparent men.
night sound
the sound of a woman breathing
who has inhaled already
past her mother, who has left
behind more days than are ahead,
who must measure her exhalations
carefully, who spends these cries,
these soft expensive murmurings on you
man breathing as if there could be
a surplus of air, of evening,
as if there could be even now
no question of tomorrow.
the spirit walks in
through the door
of the flesh’s house
the rooms leading off
from the hall
burn with color
the spirit feels
the door behind her close
and the sinister hall
is thick with the one word
Choose
the poet walks
in through the door
of the scholar’s house
the rooms leading off
from the hall
buzz with language
the poet
feels the door
behind her close
and the sinister hall
is dark with the one word
Choose
after the reading
tired from being a poet
i throw myself onto
Howard Johnson’s bed
and long for home,
that sad mysterious country
where nobody notices
a word i say, nobody
thinks more of me or less
than they would think of any
chattering thing; mice
running toward the dark, leaves
rubbing against one another,
words tumbling together
up the long stair, home,
my own cheap lamp i can switch off
pretending i’m at peace there
in the dark. home. i sink at last into
the poet’s short and fitful sleep.
moonchild
only after the death
of the man who killed the bear,
after the death of the coalminer’s son,
did i remember that the moon
also rises, coming heavy or thin
over the living fields, over
the cities of the dead;
only then did i remember how she
catches the sun and keeps most of him
for the evening that surely will come;
and it comes.
only then did i know that to live
in the world all that i needed was
some small light and know that indeed
i would rise again and rise again to dance.
tree of life
How art thou fallen from Heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning? . . .
—Isaiah 14:12
oh where have you fallen to
son of the morning
beautiful lucifer
bringer of light
it is all shadow
in heaven without you
the cherubim sing
kaddish
and even the
solitary brother
has risen from his seat
of stones he is holding
they say a wooden stick
and pointing toward
a garden
light breaks
where no light was before
where no eye is prepared
to see
and animals rise up to walk
oh lucifer
what have you done
remembering the birth of lucifer
some will remember
the flash of light
as he broke
from the littlest finger
of God some will
recall the bright shimmer
and then
flush in the tremble of air
so much shine
even then the seraphim say
they knew
it was too much for
one small heaven
they rustled their three wings
they say and began
to wait and to watch
whispered to lucifer
lucifer six-finger
where have you gone to
with your swift lightning
oh son of the morning
was it the woman
enticed you to leave us
was it to touch her
featherless arm
was it to curl your belly
around her
that you fell laughing
your grace all ashard
leaving us here in
perpetual evening
even the guardians
silent all of us
going about our
father’s business
less radiant
less sure
eve’s version
smooth talker
slides into my dreams
and fills them with apple
apple snug as my breast
in the palm of my hand
apple sleek apple sweet
and bright in my mouth
it is your own lush self
you hunger for
he whispers lucifer
honey-tongue.
lucifer understanding at last
thy servant lord
bearer of lightning
and of lust
thrust between the
legs of the earth
into this garden
phallus and father
doing holy work
oh sweet delight
oh eden
if the angels
hear of this
there will be no peace
in heaven
the garden of delight
for some
it is stone
bare smooth
as a buttock
rounding
into the crevasse
of the world
for some
it is extravagant
water mouths wide
washing together
forever for some
it is fire
for some air
and for some
certain only of the syllables
it is the element they
search their lives for
eden
for them
it is a test