mercy
Lucille Clifton understands that other people's joy, grief, and loss stand in direct relationship with her own. Amid turns sad, exuberant and angry, her voice has always been one of great empathy and wisdom -- as she says, "the only mercy is memory." In Mercy, her eleventh book of poetry, the National Book Award-winner speaks to the tenuous relationship between mothers and daughters, the open wounds of terrorism and racial prejudice, and the redemptive gifts of faith and art.
Excerpts
"water sign woman"
the woman who feels everything
sits in her new house
waiting for someone to come
who knows how to carry water
without spilling, who knows
why the desert is sprinkled
with salt, why tomorrow
is such a long and ominous word.
“in white america”
i come to read them poems,
a fancy trick i do
like juggling with balls of light.
i stand, a dark spinner,
in the grange hall,
in the library, in the
smaller conference room
“telling our stories”
the fox came every evening to my door
asking for nothing. my fear
trapped me inside, hoping to dismiss her
but she sat till morning, waiting.
at dawn we would, each of us,
rise from our haunches, look through the glass
then walk away.
Lucille Clifton’s writing some of the best there is. True to life. Simple but profound. One of my ultra favorite authors.