Better late than never, right?

Saturday, August 22, 2009

I have been a really bad blogger lately, and I missed two Slow Language Fridays. So, to make up for it, I'm putting up two new poems today, both by Lucille Clifton.
The first poem is light-hearted and a little bit sassy. I love the image that I get from the last three lines.







Lucille Clifton
June 1926





Homage to My Hips


these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!


***

This second poem is quite a change of pace. It always hits me in a very tender place. But the strength that you can feel in the last stanza is very inspiring.

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 into 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

1 comments:

Tracie Yule said...

I love, love the Lucille Clifton poem. She came to one of my classes in college and read the poem. Although, I didn't know who she was at the time, her reading of it really stuck out to me. Thanks for the reminder if how beautiful it is.