The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010

by Lucille Clifton

  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