“After Kent State,” Lucille Clifton

After Kent State

only to keep
his little fear
he kills his cities
and his trees
even his children oh
people
white ways are
the way of death
come into the
Black
and live

“the woman in the camp,” Lucille Clifton

cbs news
lebanon 1983

they murdered
27 of my family
counting the babies
in the wombs.
some of the men
spilled seed on the ground.
how much is a
thousand thousand?

i had a child.
i taught her to love.
i should have taught her
to fear.
i have learned about blood
and bullets where is the love
in my education?

a woman in this camp
has 1 breast and 2 babies.
a woman in this camp
has breasts like mine.
a woman in this camp
watched the stealing
of her husband.
a woman in this camp
has eyes like mine.

alive
i never thought of other women.
if i am ever alive again
i will hold out my female hands.

“4/25/89 late,” Lucille Clifton

(f. diagnosed w. cancer 4/25/84)

when i awake
the time will have jerked back
into five years ago,
the sea will
not be this one,
you will run
under a grayer sky
wearing that green knit cap
we laughed about
and, sweating home again
after your run, all fit
and well and safe, you will
prepare to meet that
stethoscopic group
and hear yourself pronounced
an almost ghost.

“Dialysis,” Lucille Clifton

after the cancer, the kidneys
refused to continue.
they closed their thousand eyes.

blood fountains from the blind man’s
arm and decorates the tile today.
somebody mops it up.

the woman who is over ninety
cries for her mother, if our dead
were here they would save us.

we are not supposed to hate
the dialysis unit. we are not
supposed to hate the universe.

this is not supposed to happen to me.
after the cancer the body refused
to lose any more. even the poisons
were claimed and kept

until they threatened to destroy
the heart they loved. in my dream
a house is burning.

something crawls out of the fire
cleansed and purified.
in my dream i call it light.

after the cancer i was so grateful
to be alive. i am alive and furious.
Blessed be even this?

“why some people be mad at me sometimes,” Lucille Clifton

they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and i keep on remembering
mine