forever i was almost
almost there when i heard
behind me
“Lazarus, come forth” and
i found myself twisting
in the light for this
is the miracle, mary martha;
at my head and at my feet
singing my name
was the same voice
lazarus
second day
i am not the same man
borne into the crypt.
as ones return from otherwhere
altered by what they have seen,
so have i been forever.
lazarus.
lazarus who was dead.
what entered the light was one man.
what walked out is another.
lazarus
third day
on the third day i contemplate
what i was moving from
what i was moving toward
light again and
i could hear the seeds
turning in the grass mary
martha i could feel the world
now i sit here in a crevice
on this rock stared at
answering questions
sisters stand away
from the door to my grave
the only truth i know
birthday 1999
it is late. the train
that is coming is
closer. a woman can hear it
in her fingers, in her knees,
in the space where her uterus
was. the platform feels
filled with people
but she sees no one else.
she can almost hear the
bright train eye.
she can almost touch the cracked
seat labeled lucille.
someone should be with her.
someone should undress her
stroke her one more time
and the train
keeps coming closer.
it is a dream i am having
more and more and more.
grief
begin with the pain
of the grass
that bore the weight
of adam,
his broken rib mending
into eve,
imagine
the original bleeding,
adam moaning
and the lamentation of grass.
from that garden,
through fields of lost
and found, to now, to here,
to grief for the upright
animal, to grief for the
horizontal world.
pause then for the human
animal in its coat
of many colors. pause
for the myth of america.
pause for the myth
of america.
and pause for the girl
with twelve fingers
who never learned to cry enough
for anything that mattered,
not enough for the fear,
not enough for the loss,
not enough for the history,
not enough
for the disregarded planet.
not enough for the grass.
then end in the garden of regret
with time’s bell tolling grief
and pain,
grief for the grass
that is older than adam,
grief for what is born human,
grief for what is not.
report from the angel of eden
i found them there
rubbing against the leaves
so that the nubs of their
wings were flush under their skin
and it seemed like dancing
as when we angels
praise among the clouds
but they were not praising You
i watched
the grass grow soft and rich
under their luminous bodies
and their halos begin to fade
it was like dancing
creation flowered around them
moaning with delight they were
trembling and i knew
a world was being born
i feared for their immortality
i feared for mine
under the strain of such desire
i knew
they could do evil
with it and i knew
they would
when i remembered what i was
i swiveled back unto Your grace
still winged i think but wondering
what now becomes what now
of Paradise
Mercy
(2004)
Always Rica 1961–2000
Always Chan 1962–2004
“. . . the only mercy is memory”
last words
the gift
there was a woman who hit her head
and ever after she could see the sharp
wing of things blues and greens
radiating from the body of her sister
her mother her friends when she felt
in her eyes the yellow sting
of her mothers dying she trembled
but did not speak her bent brain
stilled her tongue so that her life
became flash after flash of silence
bright as flame she is gone now
her head knocked again against a door
that opened for her only
i saw her last in a plain box smiling
behind her sewn eyes there were hints
of purple and crimson and gold
out of body
(mama)
the words
they fade
i sift
toward other languages
you must listen
with your hands
with the twist ends
of your hair
that leaf
pick up
the sharp green stem
try to feel me feel you
i am saying I still love you
i am saying
i am trying to say
i am trying to say
from my mouth
but baby there is no
mouth
dying
i saw a small moon rise
from the breast of a woman
lying in a hospital hall
and I saw that the moon was me
and I saw that the punctured bag
of a woman body was me
and i saw you sad there in the lobby
waiting to visit and I wanted
to sing to you
go home
i am waiting for you there
last words
(mama)
i am unforming
out of flesh
into the rubble
of the ground
there will be
new scars new tests
new “Mamas”
coming around
oh antic God
return to me
my mother in her thirties
leaned across the front porch
the huge pillow of her breasts
pressing against the rail
summoning me in for bed.
I am almost the dead woman’s age times two.
I can barely recall her song
the scent of her hands
though her wild hair scratches my dreams
at night. return to me, oh Lord of then
and now, my mother’s calling,
her young voice humming my name.
april
bird and bird
over the thawing river
circling parker
waving his horn
in the air above the osprey’s
nest my child
smiling her I know something
smile their birthday
is coming they are trying
to b
e forty they will fail
they will fall
each from a different year
into the river into the bay
into an ocean of marvelous things
after one year
she who was beautiful
entered Lake-Too-Soon without warning us
that it would storm in
our hearts forever that it would
alter the landscape of our lives
and that at night we would
fold ourselves into
towels into blankets anything
trying to stop our eyes
from drowning themselves
sonku
his heart, they said, was
three times the regular size.
yes, i said, i know.
children
they are right, the poet mother
carries her wolf in her heart,
wailing at pain yet suckling it like
romulus and remus. this now.
how will I forgive myself
for trying to bear the weight of this
and trying to bear the weight also
of writing the poem
about this?
stories
surely i am able to write poems
celebrating grass and how the blue
in the sky can flow green or red
and the waters lean against the
chesapeake shore like a familiar,
poems about nature and landscape
surely but whenever i begin
“the trees wave their knotted branches
and . . .” why
is there under that poem always
an other poem?
mulberry fields
they thought the field was wasting
and so they gathered the marker rocks and stones and
piled them into a barn they say that the rocks were shaped
some of them scratched with triangles and other forms they
must have been trying to invent some new language they say
the rocks went to build that wall there guarding the manor and
some few were used for the state house
crops refused to grow
i say the stones marked an old tongue and it was called eternity
and pointed toward the river i say that after that collection
no pillow in the big house dreamed i say that somewhere under
here moulders one called alice whose great grandson is old now
too and refuses to talk about slavery i say that at the
masters table only one plate is set for supper i say no seed
can flourish on this ground once planted then forsaken wild
berries warm a field of bones
bloom how you must i say
the river between us
in the river that your father fished
my father was baptized. it was
their hunger that defined them,
one, a man who knew he could
feed himself if it all came down,
the other a man who knew he needed help.
this is about more than color. it is
about how we learn to see ourselves.
it is about geography and memory.
it is about being poor people
in america. it is about my father
and yours and you and me and
the river that is between us.
cancer
the first time the dreaded word
bangs against your eyes so that
you think you must have heard it but
what you know is that the room
is twisting crimson on its hinge
and all the other people there are dolls
watching from their dollhouse chairs
the second time you hear a swoosh as if
your heart has fallen down a well
and shivers in the water there
trying to not drown
the third time and you are so tired
so tired and you nod your head
and smile and walk away from
the angel uniforms the blood
machines and you enter the nearest
movie house and stand in the last aisle
staring at the screen with your living eyes
in the mirror
an only breast
leans against her chest wall
mourning she is suspended
in a sob between t and e and a and r
and the gash ghost of her sister
t and e and a and r
it is pronounced like crying
it is pronounced like
being torn away
it is pronounced like trying to re
member the shape of an unsafe life
blood
here in this ordinary house
a girl is pressing a scarf
against her bleeding body
this is happening now
she will continue for over
thirty years emptying and
filling sistering the moon
on its wild ride
men will march to games and wars
pursuing the bright red scarf
of courage heroes every moon
some will die while every moon
blood will enter this ordinary room
this ordinary girl will learn
to live with it
a story
for edgar
whose father is that
guarding the bedroom door
watching out for prowling
strangers for beasts and ogres
like in the childrens tale
not yours not mine
ours loomed there in the half
shadow of a daughters room
moaning a lullaby
in a wolfs voice
later
our mothers went mad and
our brothers killed themselves
and we began this storytelling life
wondering whose father that was
wondering how did we survive
to live not happily perhaps but
ever after
mercy
how grateful I was when he decided
not to replace his fingers with his thing
though he thought about it was going to
but mumbled “maybe I shouldn’t do that”
and didn’t do that and I was so
grateful then and now grateful
how sick i am how mad
here rests
my sister Josephine
born july in ’29
and dead these 15 years
who carried a book
on every stroll.
when daddy was dying
she left the streets
and moved back home
to tend him.
her pimp came too
her Diamond Dick
and they would take turns
reading
a bible aloud through the house.
when you poem this
and you will she would say
remember the Book of Job.
happy birthday and hope
to you Josephine
one of the easts
most wanted.
may heaven be filled
with literate men
may they bed you
with respect.
after oz
midnight we slip into her room
and fill her pockets with stones
so that she is weighted down
so that storms cannot move her
she disappears for hours
then staggers back smelling of straw
of animal
perhaps we have lost her
perhaps home is no longer comfort
or comfort no longer home
evenings we sit awake in
our disenchanted kitchen
listening to the dog whine
to dorothy clicking her he
els
the Phantom
in his purple mask
his purple body suit
lived with a wolf
called Devil
the village believed him
immortal
the-ghost-who-walks
though he was only a man
i would save up
to go watch him
in his cave of skulls
his penthouse in the city
he would fall in love
with a white girl
like all the heroes
and monsters did
i was a little brown girl
after the show I would
walk home wondering
what would he feel
if he saw me
what is the color of
his country
what is the color
of mine
The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 Page 19