by Alice Walker
THE WORLD WILL FOLLOW JOY
ALSO BY ALICE WALKER
Hard Times Require Furious Dancing: New Poems
A Poem Traveled Down My Arm: Poems and Drawings
Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth
Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems
Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful
Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning
Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems
Once
THE
WORLD
WILL
FOLLOW
JOY
Turning Madness
into Flowers
{New Poems}
ALICE WALKER
THE NEW PRESS
NEW YORK
© 2013 by Alice Walker
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form,
without written permission from the publisher.
Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book
should be mailed to: Permissions Department, The New Press,
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Published in the United States by
The New Press, New York, 2013
Distributed by Perseus Distribution
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Walker, Alice, 1944-
[Poems. Selections]
The world will follow joy : turning madness into flowers (new poems) / Alice Walker.
pages cm
Poems.
ISBN 978-1-59558-887-6 (e-book) (print)
I. Title.
PS3573.A425W67 2013
811’.54—dc232012041853
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Contents
Foreword
What Makes the Dalai Lama Lovable?
If I Was President (“Were” May Be Substituted by Those Who Prefer It)
From: Poems for My Girls
Don’t Be Like Those Who Ask for Everything
Knowing You Might Someday Come
Turning Madness into Flowers #1
What It Feels Like
Before I Leave the Stage
Remember?
Working Class Hero
The Ways of Water
You Want to Grow Old Like the Carters
The Answer Is: Live Happily!
Word Reaches Us
When You See Water
This Is a Story of How Love Works
Alice and Kwamboka
May It Be Said of Me
And Do You See What They Have Bought with It?
She
Our Martyrs
The Tree of Life Has Fallen
To Change the World Enough
Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit
What Do I Get for Getting Old? A Picture Story for the Curious!
Desire
March Births
Two Boys on a Pink Tricycle
Coming to Worship the 1,000-Year-Old Cherry Tree
Listening to Bedouins, Thinking of Bob
Peonies
Black and White Cows
Worms Won’t Need a Menu
From Paradise to Paradise
Sailing the Hot Streets of Athens, Greece
Life Takes Its Own Sweet Time
One Meaning of the Immaculate Heart
To Stand Beaming and Clapping
And in That Sacred Time
Why Peace Is Always a Good Idea
Hope
Tranquil
The Raping of Maids
This Human Journey
In This You Are Wrong
Hope to Sin Only in the Service of Waking Up
The Part of God That Stings
9/11: An Irrelevant Truth
The Buddha’s Disagreeable Relative
We Who Have Survived
Racism Dates Us
The World We Want Is Us
The Joyful News of Your Arrest
Every Revolution Needs Fresh Poems
The Foolishness of Captivity
Despair Is the Ground Bounced Back From
Occupying Mumia’s Cell
Another Way to Peace
We Pay a Visit to Those Who Play at Being Dead
Democratic Womanism
Democratic Motherism
After Many Years and Much Silliness
When I Join You
Going Out to the Garden
Notes
Photo Credits
In loving memory of Rudolph Byrd
so deeply missed
and of the miracle that was our trust.
And for G. Kaleo Larson
My working-class hero.
Foreword
To a woman in whom the state of true motherhood has awakened, all creatures are her children. This love, this motherhood, is Divine Love—and that is God.
—Amma
Turning Madness into Flowers
It is my thought that the ugliness of war, of gratuitous violence in all its hideous forms, will cease very soon to appeal to even the most insulated of human beings. It will be seen by all for what it is: a threat to our well-being, to our survival as a species, and to our happiness. The brutal murder of our common mother, while we look on like frightened children, will become an unbearable visceral suffering that we will refuse to bear. We will abandon the way of the saw, the jackhammer and the drill. Of bombs, too.
As religions and philosophies that espouse or excuse violence reveal their true poverty of hope for humankind, there will be a great awakening, already begun, about what is of value in life.
We will turn our madness into flowers as a way of moving completely beyond all previous and current programming of how we must toe the familiar line of submission and fear, following orders given us by miserable souls who, somehow, have managed to almost completely control us. We will discover something wonderful: that the world really does not enjoy following the dictates of sociopaths and psychopaths, those who treat the earth, our mother, as if she is wrong, and must be constantly corrected, in as sadistic and domineering a way as that of a drunken husband who kills his wife.
The world—the animals, including us humans—wants to be engaged in something entirely other, seeing, and delighting in, the stark wonder of where we are: This place. This gift. This paradise.
We want to follow joy.
And we shall.
The madness, of course, for each one of us, will have to be sorted out.1
—Alice Walker
August 2012
www.AliceWalkersGarden.com
What Makes the Dalai Lama Lovable?
His posture
From so many years
Holding his robe with one hand
Is odd.
His gait
Also.
One’s own body
Aches
Witnessing
The sloping
Shoulders
& Angled
Neck;
One hopes
He
Attends
Yoga class
Or does Yoga
On his own
As part
Of prayer.
He smiles
As he bows
To Everything:
Accepting
The heavy
Burdens
Of
This earth;
Its
Toxic
Evils
& Prolific
Insults.
Even so,
He sleeps
Through
The night
Like a child
Because
Thank goodness
That is something
Else
Daylong
Meditation
Assures.
You could cry
Yourself to sleep
On his behalf
& He
Has done that
Too.
Life
Has been
A great
Endless
Tearing away
For
Him.
From
Mother, Father, Siblings, Country, Home.
And yet
Clearly
His mother
Loved him;
His brother & sister
Too: Even his
Not so constant father,
Who
When Tenzin was
A boy
Shared
With him
Delicious
Scraps
Of
Succulent
Pork.
He laughs
Telling this
Story
Over half a century
Later
&
To who knows
How many
Puzzled
Vegetarians:
About
The way he sat
Behind
His father’s chair
Like a dog,
Relishing
Each juicy
Greasy
Bite.
Whenever I see
The Dalai Lama
My first impulse
Is to laugh
I am so happy
To
Lay eyes
On
One
So effortlessly
Beautiful.
That balding head
That holds
A shine;
Those wire framed
Glasses
That might
Have come
From
Anywhere.
That look of having offered
All he has.
He is my teacher;
Just staying alive.
Other teachers
I have had
Resemble him
In some way;
They too
Were
&
Are
Smart
And Humble;
Fascinated
By Science & things like
Time,
Eternity,
Cause & Effect;
The Evolution
Of the Soul.
A
Soul
That
Might
Or might not
Exist.
They too
See all of us
—Banker, murderer, gardener, thief—
When they look
Out across
The world:
But that is not all
They see.
They see our suffering;
Our striving
To find
The right path;
The one with heart
We may only
Have heard about.
The Dalai Lama is Cool
A modern word
For
“Divine”
Because he wants
Only
Our collective
Health
& Happiness.
That’s it!
What makes
Him
Lovable
Is
His holiness.
***
If I Was President (“Were” May Be Substituted by Those Who Prefer It)
If I was President
The first thing I would do
is call Mumia Abu-Jamal.
No,
if I was President
the first thing I would do
is call Leonard Peltier.
No,
if I was President
the first person I would call
is that rascal
John Trudell.
No,
the first person I’d call
is that other rascal
Dennis Banks.
I would also call
Alice Walker.
I would make a conference call.
And I would say this:
Yo, you troublemakers,
it is time to let all of us
out of prison.
Pack up your things.
Dennis and John,
collect Alice Walker
if you can find her:
in Mendocino, Molokai, Mexico or
Gaza,
& head out to the prisons
where Mumia and Leonard
are waiting for you.
They will be traveling
light.
Mumia used to own a lot
of papers
but they took most of those
away from him.
Leonard
will probably want to drag along
some of his
canvases.
Alice
who may well be
shopping
in New Delhi
will no doubt want to
dress up for the occasion
in a sparkly shalwar kemeez.
My next call is going to be
to the Cubans
all five of them;
so stop worrying.
For now, you’re my fish.
I just had this long letter
from Alice and she has begged me
to put an end
to her suffering.
What? she said.
You think these men are the only ones who suffer
when Old Style America locks them up
& throws away
the key?
I can’t tell you, she goes on,
the changes
this viciousness
has put me through,
and I have had a child to raise
& classes to teach
& food to buy
and just because
I’m a poet
it doesn’t mean
I don’t have to
pay the mortgage
or the rent.
Yet all these years,
nearly thirty or something
of them
I have been running around
the country
and the world
trying to arouse justice
for these men.
Tonsillitis
hasn’t stopped me.
Migraine
hasn’t stopped me.
Lyme disease
hasn’t stopped me.
And why?
Because
knowing the country
that I’m in,
as you are destined to learn
it too,
I know wrong
when I see it.
If that chair you’re sitting in
could speak
you would have it moved
to another room.
You would burn it.
So, amigos,
pack your things.
Alice and John and Dennis
are on their way.
They are bringing prayers from Nilak Butler and Bill Wahpepah;
they are bringing sweet grass and white sage
&nb
sp; from Pine Ridge.
I am the President
at least until the Corporations
purchase the next election,
and this is what I choose
to do on my first day.2
***
From: Poems for My Girls
The Chicken Chronicles: Sitting with the Angels Who Have Returned with My Memories
—Pax Ameracauna, chapter 22
How can Humanity
look the deer
in
the face?
How can I,
having erected
my fence?
***
Don’t be like those who ask for everything
For Queen Miriam (Makeba) who stood on swollen feet and sang her people to freedom
Don’t be like those who ask for everything:
praise, a blurb, a free ride in my rented
limousine. They ask for everything but never offer
anything in return.
Be like those who can see that my feet ache
from across a crowded room
that a foot rub
if I’m agreeable
never mind the staring
is the best way to smile
& say hello
to me.
***
Knowing You Might Someday Come
For Kaleo
Knowing you might someday come
and how unprepared I’ve always
been
like Mr. Sloppy
in Charles Dickens’
our Mutual Friend
I made a list:
not meat, vegetables, beer and pudding
but number l, warmth.
number 2, warmth.
number 3, warmth.
number 4, a good snuggler.
number 5, someone who sings
while he/she works.
number 6, a dancer.
number 7, someone who grows
& is intrigued by
the mind. And
by the spirit too.
Number 8, someone who is loved
by animals; and loves
them back without
a thought.
number 9, someone who smells
delicious.
number 10, someone whose anger
lasts no longer than mine.
number 11, someone who
stands beside me. behind me. If necessary
in front of me.
number 12, someone who
is a passable cook.
number 13, Someone who laughs
