Lucille Clifton Poems

what does this mean.
to see walking men
wrapped in the color of death,
to hear from their tongue
...

listen children
keep this in the place
you have for keeping
always
...

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
...

it is all blood and breaking,
blood and breaking, the thing
drops out of its box squalling
into the light. they are both squalling,
...

for mama

remember this.
she is standing by
...

fox

who
can blame her for hunkering
...

curling them around
i hold their bodies in obscene embrace
thinking of everything but kinship.
collards and kale
...

harriet
if i be you
let me not forget
to be the pistol
...

ask me to tell how it feels
remembering your mother's face
turned to water under the white words
of the man at the shoe store. ask me,
...

it is hard to remain human on a day
when birds perch weeping
in the trees and the squirrel eyes
do not look away but the dog ones do
...