The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010
Page 17
until you can feel the shadow
of another memphis and another
river. nile
wake up girl.
you dreaming.
the sign may be water or fire
or it may be the black earth
or the black blood under the earth
or it may be the syllables themselves
coded to you from your southern kin.
wake up girl.
i swear you dreaming.
memphis.
capital of the old kingdom
of ancient egypt at the apex
of the river across from
the great pyramids.
nile. born in the mountains
of the moon.
wake up girl,
this don’t connect.
wait there.
in the shadow of your room
you may see another dusky woman
weakened by too much loss.
she will be dreaming a small boat
through centuries of water
into the white new world.
she will be weaving garments
of neglect.
wake up girl.
this don’t mean nothing.
meaning is the river
of voices. meaning
is the patience of the moon.
meaning is the thread
running forever in shadow.
girl girl wake up.
somebody calling you.
slaveships
loaded like spoons
into the belly of Jesus
where we lay for weeks for months
in the sweat and stink
of our own breathing
Jesus
why do you not protect us
chained to the heart of the Angel
where the prayers we never tell
and hot and red
as our bloody ankles
Jesus
Angel
can these be men
who vomit us out from ships
called Jesus Angel Grace Of God
onto a heathen country
Jesus
Angel
ever again
can this tongue speak
can these bones walk
Grace Of God
can this sin live
entering the south
i have put on my mother’s coat.
it is warm and familiar
as old fur
and i can hear hushed voices
through it. too many
animals have died
to make this. the sleeves
coil down toward my hands
like rope. i will wear it
because she loved it
but the blood from it pools
on my shoulders
heavy and dark and alive.
the mississippi river empties into the gulf
and the gulf enters the sea and so forth,
none of them emptying anything,
all of them carrying yesterday
forever on their white tipped backs,
all of them dragging forward tomorrow.
it is the great circulation
of the earth’s body, like the blood
of the gods, this river in which the past
is always flowing. every water
is the same water coming round.
everyday someone is standing on the edge
of this river, staring into time,
whispering mistakenly:
only here. only now.
old man river
everything elegant
but this water
tables set with crystal
at the tea shop
miss lady patting her lips
with linen
horses pure stock
negras pure stock
everything clear
but this big muddy
water
don’t say nothin’
must know somethin’
Beckwith found guilty of shooting Medgar
Evers in the back, killing him in 1963.
—newspaper 2/94
the son of medgar
will soon be
older than medgar
he came he says
to show in this courtroom
medgar’s face
the old man sits
turned toward his old wife
then turns away
he is sick
his old wife sighs
he is only a sick old man
medgar isn’t
wasn’t
won’t be
auction street
for angela mcdonald
consider the drum.
consider auction street
and the beat
throbbing up through our shoes,
through the trolley
so that it rides as if propelled
by hundreds, by thousands
of fathers and mothers
led in a coffle
to the block.
consider the block,
topside smooth as skin
almost translucent like a drum
that has been beaten
for the last time
and waits now to be honored
for the music it has had to bear.
then consider brother moses,
who heard from the mountaintop:
take off your shoes,
the ground you walk is holy.
memphis
. . . at the river i stand,
guide my feet, hold my hand
i was raised
on the shore
of lake erie
e is for escape
there are more s’es
in mississippi
than my mother had
sons
this river never knew
the kingdom of dahomey
the first s
begins in slavery
and ends in y
on the bluffs
of memphis
why are you here
the river wonders
northern born
looking across from buffalo
you look into canada toronto
is the name of the lights
burning at night
the bottom of memphis
drops into the nightmare
of a little girl’s fear
in fifteen minutes
they could be here
i could be there
mississippi
not the river the state
schwerner
and chaney
and goodman
medgar
schwerner
and chaney
and goodman
and medgar
my mother had one son
he died gently near lake erie
some rivers flow back
toward the beginning
i never learned to swim
will i float or drown
in this memphis
on the mississippi river
what is this southland
what has this to do with egypt
or dahomey
or with me
so many questions
northern born
what comes after this
water earth fire air
i can scarcely remember
gushing down through my mother
onto the family bed
but the dirt of eviction
is still there
and the burning bodies of men
i have tried to love
through the southern blinds
narrow memories enter the room
i had not counted on ice
nor clay nor the uncertain hiss
of an old flame water earth fire
it is always unexpected and
i wonder what is coming
after this whether it is air
or it is nothing
blake
saw them glittering in the trees,
their quills erect among the leaves,
angels everywhere. we need new words
for what this is, this hunger entering our
loneliness like birds, stunning our eyes into rays
of hope. we need the flutter that can save
us, something that will swirl across the face
of what we have become and bring us grace.
back north, i sit again in my own home
dreaming of blake, searching the branches
for just one poem.
4. In the Meantime
evening and my dead once husband
rises up from the spirit board
through trembled air i moan
the names of our wayward sons
and ask him to explain why
i fuss like a fishwife why
cancer and terrible loneliness
and the wars against our people
and the room glimmers as if washed
in tears and out of the mist a hand
becomes flesh and i watch
as its pointing fingers spell
it does not help to know
memory
ask me to tell how it feels
remembering your mother’s face
turned to water under the white words
of the man at the shoe store. ask me,
though she tells it better than i do,
not because of her charm
but because it never happened
she says,
no bully salesman swaggering,
no rage, no shame, none of it
ever happened.
i only remember buying you
your first grown up shoes
she smiles. ask me
how it feels.
my sanctified grandmother
spoke in tongues
dancing the syllables
down the aisle.
she leaned on light
as she sashayed through
the church hall conversing
with angels.
only now, grown away
from embarrassment,
only now do i beseech her,
i, who would ask the seraphim
to speak to me in my own words:
grandmother
help them to enter
my mouth. teach me
to lean on understanding.
not my own. theirs.
lee
my mother’s people
belonged to the lees
my father would say
then spout a litany
of names old lighthorse harry
old robert e
my father
who lied on his deathbed
who knew the truth
but didn’t always choose it
who saw himself an honorable man
was proud of lee
that man of honor
praised by grant and lincoln
worshipped by his men
revered by the state of virginia
which he loved almost as much
as my father did
it may have been a lie
it may have been
one of my father’s tales
if so there was an honor in it
if he was indeed to be
the child of slaves
he would decide himself
that proud old man
i can see him now
chaining his mother to lee
album
12/2/92
this lucky old man
is my father. he is
waving and walking away
from damage he has done.
he is dressed in his good
gray hat, his sunday suit.
he knows himself to be
a lucky man.
today
is his birthday somewhere.
he is ninety.
what he has forgotten
is more than i have seen.
what i have forgotten
is more than i can bear.
he is my father,
our father,
and all of us still love him.
i turn the page, marveling,
jesus christ
what a lucky old man!
what did she know, when did she know it
in the evenings
what it was the soft tap tap
into the room the cold curve
of the sheet arced off
the fingers sliding in
and the hard clench against the wall
before and after
all the cold air cold edges
why the little girl never smiled
they are supposed to know everything
our mothers what did she know
when did she know it
in the same week
for samuel sayles, jr., 1938–1993
after the third day
the fingers of your folded hands
must have melted together
into perpetual prayer.
it was hot and buffalo.
nothing innocent could stay.
in the same week
stafford folded his tongue
and was gone. nothing
innocent is safe.
the frailty of love
falls from the newspaper
onto our bedroom floor
and we walk past not noticing.
the end of something simple
is happening here,
something essential. brother,
we burned you into little shells
and stars. we hold them hard,
attend too late to each,
mourn every necessary bit.
the angels shake their heads.
too little and too late.
heaven
my brother is crouched at the edge
looking down.
he has gathered a circle of cloudy
friends around him
and they are watching the world.
i can feel them there, i always could.
i used to try to explain to him
the afterlife,
and he would laugh. he is laughing now,
pointing toward me. “she was my sister,”
i feel him say,
“even when she was right, she was wrong.”
lorena
it lay in my palm soft and trembled
as a new bird and i thought about
authority and how it always insisted
on itself, how it was master
of the man, how it measured him, never
was ignored or denied and how it promised
there would be sweetness if it was obeyed
just like the saints do, like the angels,
and i opened the window and held out my
uncupped hand. i swear to god,
i thought it could fly
in the meantime
Poem ending with a line from The Mahabharata,
quoted at the time of the first atomic blast.
the Lord of loaves and fishes
frowns as the children of
Haiti Somalia Bosnia Rwanda Everyhere
float onto the boats of their bellies
and die in the meantime
someone who is not hungry sits to dine
we could have become
fishers of men
we could have been
a balm
a light
we have become
not what we were
in the mean time
that split apart with the atom
all roads began to lead
to these tables
these hungry children
this time
and
I am become Death the destroyer of worlds.
5. From the Book of David
for anne caston
dancer
i have ruled
for forty years,
seven in hebron
thiry-three in jerusalem.
i have lain under the stars
and dreamed of foreign women.
i have dreamed my legs around them,
dancing.
some nights,
holding them in the dream,
i would feel us
swallowed by the sky.
lately i have begun to bed
with virgins,
their round breasts warm
to an old man.
i hold my seed
still plentiful as stars.
it is not my time.
somewhere something is choosing.
i can feel it dancing in me,
something to do with
virgins and with stars.
i am grown old and full of days.
my thighs are trembling.
what will the world remember,
what matters to time,
i wonder,
the dancer or the dance?
son of jesse
my father had eight sons