The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010
Page 14
adam thinking
she
stolen from my bone
is it any wonder
i hunger to tunnel back
inside desperate
to reconnect the rib and clay
and to be whole again
some need is in me
struggling to roar through my
mouth into a name
this creation is so fierce
i would rather have been born
eve thinking
it is wild country here
brothers and sisters coupling
claw and wing
groping one another
i wait
while the clay two-foot
rumbles in his chest
searching for language to
call me
but he is slow
tonight as he sleeps
i will whisper into his mouth
our names
the story thus far
so they went out
clay and morning star
following the bright back
of the woman
as she walked past
the cherubim
turning their fiery swords
past the winged gate
into the unborn world
chaos fell away
before her like a cloud
and everywhere seemed light
seemed glorious
seemed very eden
lucifer speaks in his own voice
sure as i am
of the seraphim
folding wing
so am i certain of a
graceful bed
and a soft caress
along my long belly
at endtime it was
to be
i who was called son
if only of the morning
saw that some must
walk or all will crawl
so slithered into earth
and seized the serpent in
the animals i became
the lord of snake for
adam and for eve
i the only lucifer
light-bringer
created out of fire
illuminate i could
and so
illuminate i did
prayer
blessing the boats
(at St. Mary’s)
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that
The Book of Light
(1992)
for kathy
your sister david
LIGHT
ray
stream
gleam
beam
sun
glow
flicker
shine
lucid
spark
scintilla
flash
blaze
flame
fire
serene
luciferous
lightning bolt
luster
shimmer
glisten
gloss
brightness
brilliance
splendor
sheen
dazzle
sparkle
luminous
reflection
kindle
illuminate
brighten
glorious
radiate
radiant
splendid
clarify
clear
ROGET’S THESAURUS
reflection
climbing
a woman precedes me up the long rope,
her dangling braids the color of rain.
maybe i should have had braids.
maybe i should have kept the body i started,
slim and possible as a boy’s bone.
maybe i should have wanted less.
maybe i should have ignored the bowl in me
burning to be filled.
maybe i should have wanted less.
the woman passes the notch in the rope
marked Sixty. i rise toward it, struggling,
hand over hungry hand.
june 20
i will be born in one week
to a frowned forehead of a woman
and a man whose fingers will itch
to enter me. she will crochet
a dress for me of silver
and he will carry me in it.
they will do for each other
all that they can
but it will not be enough.
none of us know that we will not
smile again for years,
that she will not live long.
in one week i will emerge face first
into their temporary joy.
daughters
woman who shines at the head
of my grandmother’s bed,
brilliant woman, i like to think
you whispered into her ear
instructions. i like to think
you are the oddness in us,
you are the arrow
that pierced our plain skin
and made us fancy women;
my wild witch gran, my magic mama,
and even these gaudy girls.
i like to think you gave us
extraordinary power and to
protect us, you became the name
we were cautioned to forget.
it is enough,
you must have murmured,
to remember that i was
and that you are. woman, i am
lucille, which stands for light,
daughter of thelma, daughter
of georgia, daughter of
dazzling you.
sam
if he could have kept
the sky in his dark hand
he would have pulled it down
and held it.
it would have called him lord
as did the skinny women
in virginia. if he
could have gone to school
he would have learned to write
his story and not live it.
if he could have done better
he would have. oh stars
and stripes forever,
what did you do to my father?
my lost father
see where he moves
he leaves a wake of tears
see in the path of his going
the banners of regret
see just above him the cloud
of welcome see him rise
see him enter the company
of husbands fathers sons
thel
was my first landscape,
red brown as the clay
of her georgia.
sweet attic of a woman,
repository of old songs.
there was such music in her;
she would sit, shy as a wren
humming alone and lonely
amid broken promises,
amid the sweet broken bodies
of birds.
imagining bear
for alonzo moore sr.
imagine him too tall and too wide
for the entrance into parlors
imagine his hide gruff, the hair on him
grizzled even to his own hand
imagine his odor surrounding him,
rank and bittersweet as bark
imagine him lumbering as he moves
imagine his growl filling the wind
give him an old guitar
give h
im a bottle of booze
imagine his children laughing; papa papa
imagine his wife sighing; oh lonnie
imagine him singing, imagine his granddaughter
remembering him in poems
c.c. rider
who is that running away
with my life? who is that
black horse, who is that rider
dressed like my sons, braided
like my daughters? who is that
georgia woman, who is that
virginia man, who is that light-eyed
stranger not looking back?
who is that hollow woman? who am i?
see see rider, see what you have done.
11/10 again
some say the radiance around the body
can be seen by eyes latticed against
all light but the particular. they say
you can notice something rise
from the houseboat of the body
wearing the body’s face,
and that you can feel the presence
of a possible otherwhere.
not mystical, they say, but human,
human to lift away from the arms that
try to hold you (as you did then)
and, brilliance magnified,
circle beyond the ironwork
encasing your human heart.
she lived
after he died
what really happened is
she watched the days
bundle into thousands,
watched every act become
the history of others,
every bed more
narrow,
but even as the eyes of lovers
strained toward the milky young
she walked away
from the hole in the ground
deciding to live. and she lived.
for roddy
i am imagining this of you,
turned away from breath
as you turned from my body,
refusing to defile what you adored;
i am imagining rejuvenated bones
rising from the dead floor where
they found you, rising and running
back into the life you loved,
dancing as you would dance
toward me, wherever, whose ever i am.
them and us
something in their psyche insists on elvis
slouching into markets, his great collar
high around his great head, his sideburns
extravagant, elvis, still swiveling those
negro hips. something needs to know
that even death, the most faithful manager
can be persuaded to give way
before real talent, that it is possible
to triumph forever on a timeless stage
surrounded by lovers giving the kid a hand.
we have so many gone. history
has taught us much about fame and its
inevitable tomorrow. we ride the subways
home from the picture show, sure about
death and elvis, but watching for marvin gaye.
the women you are accustomed to
wearing that same black dress,
their lips and asses tight;
their bronzed hair set in perfect place,
these women gathered in my dream
to talk their usual talk,
their conversation spiked with the names
of avenues in France.
and when i asked them what the hell,
they shook their marble heads
and walked erect out of my sleep,
back into a town which knows
all there is to know
about the cold outside, where i relaxed
and thought of you,
your burning blood, your dancing tongue.
song at midnight
. . . do not
send me out
among strangers
—Sonia Sanchez
brothers,
this big woman
carries much sweetness
in the folds of her flesh.
her hair
is white with wonderful.
she is
rounder than the moon
and far more faithful.
brothers,
who will not hold her,
who will find her beautiful
if you do not?
won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
lightning bolt
it was a dream
in which my greater self
rose up before me
accusing me of my life
with her extra finger
whirling in a gyre of rage
at what my days had come to.
what,
i pleaded with her, could i do,
oh what could i have done?
and she twisted her wild hair
and sparked her wild eyes
and screamed as long as
i could hear her
This. This. This.
each morning i pull myself
out of despair
from a night of coals and a tongue
blistered with smiling
the step past the mother bed
is a high step
the walk through the widow’s door
is a long walk
and who are these voices calling
from every mirrored thing
say it coward say it
here yet be dragons
so many languages have fallen
off of the edge of the world
into the dragon’s mouth. some
where there be monsters whose teeth
are sharp and sparkle with lost
people. lost poems. who
among us can imagine ourselves
unimagined? who
among us can speak with so fragile
tongue and remain proud?
the yeti poet returns to his village to tell his story
. . . found myself wondering
if i had entered
the valley of shadow
found myself wandering
a shrunken world
of hairless men
oh the pouches
they close themselves into
at night oh the thin
paps of their women
i turned from the click
of their spirit-catching box
the boom of their long stick
and made my way back
to this wilderness
where we know where we are
what we are
crabbing
(the poet crab speaks)
pulling
into their pots
our wives
our hapless children.
crabbing
they smile, meaning us
i imagine,
though our name
is our best secret.
this forward moving
fingered thing
inedible
even to itself,
how can it understand
the sweet sacred meat
of others?
the earth is a living thing
is a black shambling bear
ruffling its wild back and tossing
mountains into the sea
is a black hawk circling
the burying ground circling the bones
picked clean and discarded
is a fish black blind in the belly of water
is a diamond blind in the black belly of coal
is a black and living thing
is a favorite child
of the universe
feel her rolling her hand
in its kinky hair
feel her brushing it clean
move
On May 13, 1985 Wilson Goode, Philadelphia’s first Black mayor, authorized the bombing of 6221 Osage Avenue after the complaints of neighbors, also Black, about the Afrocentric back-to-nature group headquartered there and calling itself Move. All the members of the group wore dreadlocks and had taken the surname Africa. In the bombing eleven people, including children, were killed and sixty-one homes in the neighborhood were destroyed.
they had begun to whisper
among themselves hesitant
to be branded neighbor to the wild
haired women the naked children
reclaiming a continent
away
move
he hesitated
then turned his smoky finger