a poem in seven parts
1
convent
my knees recall the pockets
worn into the stone floor,
my hands, tracing against
the wall their original name, remember
the cold brush of brick, and the smell
of the brick powdery and wet
and the light finding its way in
through the high bars.
and also the sisters singing
at matins, their sweet music
the voice of the universe at peace
and the candles their light the light
at the beginning of creation
and the wonderful simplicity of prayer
smooth along the wooden beads
and certainly attended.
2
someone inside me remembers
that my knees must be hidden away
that my hair must be shorn
so that vanity will not test me
that my fingers are places of prayer
and are holy that my body is promised
to something more certain
than myself
3
again
born in the year of war
on the day of perpetual help.
come from the house
of stillness
through the soft gate
of a silent mother.
come to a betraying father.
come to a husband who would one day
rise and enter a holy house.
come to wrestle with you again,
passion, old disobedient friend,
through the secular days and nights
of another life.
4
trying to understand this life
who did i fail, who
did i cease to protect
that i should wake each morning
facing the cold north?
perhaps there is a cart
somewhere in history
of children crying “sister
save us” as she walks away.
the woman walks into my dreams
dragging her old habit.
i turn from her, shivering,
to begin another afternoon
of rescue, rescue.
5
sinnerman
horizontal one evening
on the cold stone,
my cross burning into
my breast, did i dream
through my veil
of his fingers digging
and is this the dream
again, him, collarless
over me, calling me back
to the stones of this world
and my own whispered
hosanna?
6
karma
the habit is heavy.
you feel its weight
pulling around your ankles
for a hundred years.
the broken vows
hang against your breasts,
each bead a word
that beats you.
even now
to hear the words
defend
protect
goodbye
lost or
alone
is to be washed in sorrow.
and in this life
there is no retreat
no sanctuary
no whole abiding
sister.
7
gloria mundi
so knowing,
what is known?
that we carry our baggage
in our cupped hands
when we burst through
the waters of our mother.
that some are born
and some are brought
to the glory of this world.
that it is more difficult
than faith
to serve only one calling
one commitment
one devotion
in one life.
Lucille Clifton, “far memory” from The Book of Light. Copyright © 1993 by Lucille Clifton.
About Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton was an American poet, writer and educator born in 1936 in Depew, New York. Her poetry was first publushed by Langston Hughes, in his anthology The Poetry of the Negro (1970). Clifton's work emphasizes strenght and endurence through adversety, focusing primarily on family life and the African-American experience. Though in her early work these themes might have been prevalent, her later work is a depiction of the poet's own experience as a human being and a woman. Noted for saying much with few words, Clifton's remarkable ability to touch the most profund of spaces and expereiences, is, perhaps, best seen precisely in what's absent in her writing: long lines, capitalizations, punctuation. Writing for the New York Times Book Review, Helen Vendler stated that Clifton
“recalls for us those bare places we have all waited as ‘ordinary women,’ with no choices but yes or no, no art, no grace, no words, no reprieve.”
Clifton was the first author to have two books nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1987:
Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969-1980 (1987) and
Next: New Poems (1987).
She was also nominated for her collection Two Headed Woman (1980) and won the Juniper Prize from the University of Massachusetts. From 1974 untill 1985, she served as the state of Maryland’s poet laureate, and won the prestigious National Book Award for Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000. In addition to her numerous poetry collections, she wrote many children’s books.
Clifton was a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
She died in Baltimore on February 13, 2010.
Want to read more poetry? Visit the POETRY PAGE or the POETRY Category, and explore.
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