January / February 2000 Bulletin

Lucille Clifton

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Like my colleagues, I am honored to be part of this group of scholars of the mind, scholars of the heart, and scholars of the spirit. Remembering all three is very important to me and, perhaps, to the world.

I'd like to read three and a half poems; one was written by me. Among the things poetry can do is remind us that we are not alone. That is a frightening thing in some ways. It is not only that we are not alone, but that we...are...not alone.

I decided that I would read the work of poets I like a lot. A couple of these poets are dead white menI can be forgiven for that. Here is a poem by William Stafford:

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could foot each other, we should consider
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give-yes or no, or maybe
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

Once, in trying to figure out once why I take such joy in my art, I came across the poem "Two Tramps in Mud Time" by Robert Frost. I will read the last part of it:

The time when most I loved my task
These two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You'd think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip on earth of outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the woods two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man's work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right-agreed.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed every really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

I was listening to the other speakers, and I am reminded that not only are there people in other countries who are not aware of the technological advantages here; there are people in this country who do not benefit from these advances. Not only are there hungry people in other countries; there are hungry people in Boston. There was an old deacon in my Baptist church (when I was a good Baptist, long ago) who could neither read nor write; his prayer was, " Lord, I can't do but a little; that I can do, that I will do."

This poem I want to read because I love it. It is a love poem by Stanley Kunitz-a remarkable poet, a remarkable man, who is still writing books in his mid-nineties. The poem, called "Touch Me," takes its first line from another poem he wrote years earlier:

Touch Me

Summer is late, my heart.

Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

One listens to that poem not out of one's role but out of one's humanness. The thing about poetry is that we approach it not out of what we dowhat is actually our jobbut out of our humanness.

This is a poem that I wrote. In electing me, you get a mother of six. My baby is 34; my oldest child is 40. In the past four years I have had breast cancer treatment, kidney failure, dialysis, and a kidney transplantand still I rise. I find that this poem applies to a lot of things, a lot of people, a lot of places.

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.

"A Ritual to Read to Each Other" from The Darkness Around Us Is Deep by William Stafford (HarperPerennial). @ 1993 by the Estate of William Stafford. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of William Stafford.

From "Two Tramps in Mud Time" from The Poetry ofRobert -Frost, edited by Edward Connery Latbem. Copyright 1936 by Robert Frost, © 1964 by Lesley Frost Ballantine, ©1969 by Henry Holt & Company, LLC. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt & Co., LLC.