out in the dark
across the lot
and over to the white folks’ section
still
it was nice
in the light of maizie’s store
to watch the wheel
and catch the wheel—
fire spinning in the air
and our edges
and our points
sharpening good as anybody’s
good times
my daddy has paid the rent
and the insurance man is gone
and the lights is back on
and my uncle brud has hit
for one dollar straight
and they is good times
good times
good times
my mama has made bread
and grampaw has come
and everybody is drunk
and dancing in the kitchen
and singing in the kitchen
oh these is good times
good times
good times
oh children think about the
good times
if i stand in my window
naked in my own house
and press my breasts
against my windowpane
like black birds pushing against glass
because i am somebody
in a New Thing
and if the man come to stop me
in my own house
naked in my own window
saying i have offended him
i have offended his
Gods
let him watch my black body
push against my own glass
let him discover self
let him run naked through the streets
crying
praying in tongues
stops
they keep coming at me
keep coming at me
all the red lights they got
all the whistles and sirens
blowing with every kind of stop
till i got to go up side a stop
and stop it
even a little old lady
in a liquor store
the discoveries of fire
remember
when the skin of your fingers healed
and the smoke rolled away from the
entrance to the cave how
the rocks cooled down
and you walked back in
once animals and now
men
those boys that ran together
at tillman’s
and the poolroom
everybody see them now
think it’s a shame
everybody see them now
remember they was fine boys
we have some fine black boys
don’t it make you want to cry?
pity this poor animal
who has never gone beyond
the ape herds gathered around the fires
of europe
all he knows how to do
is huddle with others
in straight haired grunt clusters
to keep warm
and if he has to come out
from the western dirt places
or imitation sun places
and try to make it by himself
he heads, always, for a cave
his mind shivers against the rocks
afraid of the dark
afraid of the cold
afraid to be alone
afraid of the legendary man creature
who is black
and walks on grass
and has no need for fire
the white boy
like a man overboard
crying every which way
is it in your mind
is it under your clothes
where oh where is the
saving thing
the meeting after the savior gone
4/4/68
what we decided is
you save your own self.
everybody so quiet.
not so much sorry as
resigned.
we was going to try and save you but
now i guess you got to save yourselves
(even if you don’t know
who you are
where you been
where you headed
for deLawd
people say they have a hard time
understanding how i
go on about my business
playing my ray charles
hollering at the kids—
seem like my afro
cut off in some old image
would show i got a long memory
and i come from a line
of black and going on women
who got used to making it through murdered sons
and who grief kept on pushing
who fried chicken
ironed
swept off the back steps
who grief kept
for their still alive sons
for their sons coming
for their sons gone
just pushing
ca’line’s prayer
i have got old
in a desert country
i am dry
and black as drought
don’t make water
only acid
even dogs won’t drink
remember me from wydah
remember the child
running across dahomey
black as ripe papaya
juicy as sweet berries
and set me in the rivers of your glory
Ye Ma Jah
if he ask you was i laughing
i wonder what become of my mama
and my littlest girl what couldn’t run
and i couldn’t carry her
and the baby both
and i took him cause he was a man
child
child
pray that the Lord spare hagar
till she explain
if something should happen
for instance
if the sea should break
and crash against the decks
and below decks break the cargo
against the sides of the sea
or
if the chains should break
and crash against the decks
and below decks break the sides
of the sea
or
if the seas of cities
should crash against each other
and break the chains
and break the walls holding down the cargo
and break the sides of the seas
and all the waters of the earth wash together
in a rush of breaking
where will the captains run and
to what harbor?
generations
people who are going to be
in a few years
bottoms of trees
bear a responsibility to something
besides people
if it was only
you and me
sharing the consequences
it would be different
it would be just
generations of men
but
this business of war
these war kinds of things
are erasing those natural
obedient generations
who ignored pride
stood on no hind legs
begged no water
stole no bread
did their own things
and the generations of rice
of coal
of grasshoppers
by their invisibility
denounce us
love rejected
hurts so much more
than love rejecting;
they act like they don’t love their country
no
what it is
is they foun
d out
their country don’t love them.
tyrone (1)
on this day
the buffalo soldiers
have taken up position
corner of jefferson and sycamore
we will sack the city
will sink the city
seek the city
willie b (1)
mama say
i got no business out here
in the army
cause i ain’t but twelve
and my daddy was
a white man
the mother fucker
tyrone (2)
the spirit of the buffalo soldiers
is beautiful
how we fight on down to main street
laughing and shouting
we happy together oh
we turning each other on
in this damn war
willie b (2)
why i would bring a wagon into battle
is
a wagon is a help to a soldier
with his bricks
and when he want to rest
also
today is mama’s birthday
and i’m gone get her that tv
out of old steinhart’s store
tyrone (3)
the governor has sent out
jackie robinson
and he has sprinted from center
and crouched low
and caught the ball
(what a shortstop)
and if we buffalo soldiers was sports fans
we sure would cheer
willie b (3)
mama say
he was a black hero
a champion like
muhammad ali
but i never heard of it
being not born till 1955
tyrone (4)
we made it through the swamps
and we’ll make it through the dogs
leaving our white man’s names
and white man’s traditions
and making some history
and they see the tear gas
burn my buffalo soldiers eyes
they got to say
Look yonder
Tyrone
Is
willie b (4)
i’m the one
what burned down the dew drop inn.
yes
the jew do exploit us in his bar
but also
my mama
one time in the dew drop inn
tried for a white man
and if he is on a newspaper
or something
look I am the one what burned down the dew drop inn
everybody say i’m a big boy for my age
me
willie b
son
buffalo war
war over
everybody gone home
nobody dead
everybody dying
flowers
here we are
running with the weeds
colors exaggerated
pistils wild
embarrassing the calm family flowers oh
here we are
flourishing for the field
and the name of the place
is Love
pork chops
grease stinking out across the field
into the plant where we broke the strike
old man gould sent a train south
picking up niggers
bringing them up no stop
through the polack picket lines
into the plant
chipping like hell
on eight days and off one
sleeping nights between the rows of couplers
hard and stinking out across the field
through the polack picket line
and the strike was broke
lord child i love the union
worked together
slept
fought
in the same town
all the pork chops
fried hard together
stinking together
oh mammy ca’line
a nigger polack ain’t shit
now my first wife never did come out of her room
until her shoes was buttoned
mama
looked at me and said
you always was a bad boy
and died
gould train come through and
i got on
grampaw’s girls was young
could write
their old timey friend was pregnant
and they said they pay my bills
the man was gone
and she was clean as mama
was a girl
never came out of her room
until her shoes was buttoned
scrubbed the wall sometime
twice a day
and i would make her stop clean
till she died
twenty-one years old
so was grampaw’s girl
your mama
i like to marry friends
the way it was
working with the polacks
turning into polacks
walked twelve miles into buffalo and
bought a dining room suit
mammy ca’line
walked from new orleans
to virginia
in 1830
seven years old
always said
get what you want
you from dahomey women
first colored man in town
to own a dining room suit
things was changing
new things was coming
you
admonitions
boys
i don’t promise you nothing
but this
what you pawn
i will redeem
what you steal
i will conceal
my private silence to
your public guilt
is all i got
girls
first time a white man
opens his fly
like a good thing
we’ll just laugh
laugh real loud my
black women
children
when they ask you
why is your mama so funny
say
she is a poet
she don’t have no sense
good news about the earth
(1972)
for the dead
of jackson and
orangeburg
and so on and
so on and on
about the earth
after kent state
only to keep
his little fear
he kills his cities
and his trees
even his children oh
people
white ways are
the way of death
come into the
black
and live
being property once myself
i have a feeling for it,
that’s why i can talk
about environment.
what wants to be a tree,
ought to be he can be it.
same thing for other things.
same thing for men.
the way it was
mornings
i got up early
greased my legs
straightened my hair and
walked quietly out
not touching
in the same place
the tree the lot
the poolroom deacon moore
everything was stayed
nothing changed
(nothing remained the same)
i walked out quietly
mornings
in the ’40s
a nice girl
not touching
trying to be white
the lost baby poem
/>
the time i dropped your almost body down
down to meet the waters under the city
and run one with the sewage to the sea
what did i know about waters rushing back
what did i know about drowning
or being drowned
you would have been born in winter
in the year of the disconnected gas
and no car we would have made the thin
walk over genesee hill into the canada wind
to watch you slip like ice into strangers’ hands
you would have fallen naked as snow into winter
if you were here i could tell you these
and some other things
if i am ever less than a mountain
for your definite brothers and sisters
let the rivers pour over my head
let the sea take me for a spiller
of seas let black men call me stranger
always for your never named sake
later i’ll say
i spent my life
The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 Page 4
