Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful
Poems
By Alice Walker
for two who
slipped away
almost
entirely:
my “part” Cherokee
great-grandmother
Tallulah
(Grandmama Lula)
on my mother’s side
about whom
only one
agreed-upon
thing
is known:
her hair was so long
she could sit on it;
and my white (Anglo-Irish?)
great-great-grandfather
on my father’s side;
nameless
(Walker, perhaps?),
whose only remembered act
is that he raped
a child:
my great-great-grandmother,
who bore his son,
my great-grandfather,
when she was eleven.
Rest in peace.
The meaning of your lives
is still
unfolding.
Rest in peace.
In me
the meaning of your lives
is still
unfolding.
Rest in peace, in me.
The meaning of your lives
is still unfolding.
Rest. In me
the meaning of your lives
is still unfolding.
Rest. In peace
in me
the meaning
of our lives
is still
unfolding.
Rest.
Contents
Remember?
These Mornings of Rain
First, They Said
Listen
S M
The Diamonds on Liz’s Bosom
We Alone
Attentiveness
1971
Every Morning
How Poems Are Made / A Discredited View
Mississippi Winter I
Mississippi Winter II
Mississippi Winter III
Mississippi Winter IV
love is not concerned
She said:
Walker
Killers
Songless
A Few Sirens
Poem at Thirty-nine
I Said to Poetry
Gray
Overnights
My Daughter Is Coming!
When Golda Meir Was in Africa
If “Those People” Like You
On Sight
I’m Really Very Fond
Representing the Universe
Family Of
Each One, Pull One
Who?
Without Commercials
No One Can Watch the Wasichu
The Thing Itself
Torture
Well.
Song
These Days
A Biography of Alice Walker
We had no word for the strange animal we got from the white man—the horse. So we called it šunka wakan, “holy dog.” For bringing us the horse we could almost forgive you for bringing us whiskey. Horses make a landscape look more beautiful.
—Lame Deer,
Lame Deer Seeker of Visions
REMEMBER?
Remember me?
I am the girl
with the dark skin
whose shoes are thin
I am the girl
with rotted teeth
I am the dark
rotten-toothed girl
with the wounded eye
and the melted ear.
I am the girl
holding their babies
cooking their meals
sweeping their yards
washing their clothes
Dark and rotting
and wounded, wounded.
I would give
to the human race
only hope.
I am the woman
with the blessed
dark skin
I am the woman
with teeth repaired
I am the woman
with the healing eye
the ear that hears.
I am the woman: Dark,
repaired, healed
I would give
to the human race
only hope.
I am the woman
offering two flowers
whose roots
are twin
Justice and Hope
Let us begin.
THESE MORNINGS
OF RAIN
These mornings of rain
when the house is cozy
and the phone doesn’t ring
and I am alone
though snug
in my daughter’s
fire-red robe
These mornings of rain
when my lover’s large socks
cushion my chilly feet
and meditation
has made me one
with the pine tree
outside my door
These mornings of rain
when all noises coming
from the street
have a slippery sound
and the wind whistles
and I have had my cup
of green tea
These mornings
in Fall
when I have slept late
and dreamed
of people I like
in places where we’re
obviously on vacation
These mornings
I do not need
my beloveds’ arms about me
until much later
in the day.
I do not need food
I do not need the postperson
I do not need my best friend
to call me
with the latest
on the invasion of Grenada
and her life
I do not need anything.
To be warm, to be dry,
to be writing poems again
(after months of distraction
and emptiness!),
to love and be loved
in absentia
is joy enough for me.
On these blustery mornings
in a city
that could be wet
from my kisses
I need nothing else.
And then again,
I need it all.
FIRST, THEY SAID
First, they said we were savages.
But we knew how well we had treated them
and knew we were not savages.
Then, they said we were immoral.
But we knew minimal clothing
did not equal immoral.
Next, they said our race was inferior.
But we knew our mothers
and we knew that our race
was not inferior.
After that, they said we were
a backward people.
But we knew our fathers
and knew we were not backward.
So, then they said we were
obstructing Progress.
But we knew the rhythm of our days
and knew that we were not obstructing Progress.
Eventually, they said the truth is that you eat
too much and your villages take up too much
of the land. But we knew we and our children
were starving and our villages were burned
to the ground. So we knew we were not eating
too much or taking up
too much of the land.
Finally, they had to agree with us.
They said: You are right. It is not your savagery
or your immorality or your racial inferiority or
your people’s backwardness or your obstructing of
Progress or your appetite or your infestation of the land
that is at fault. No. What is at fault
is your existence itself.
Here is money, they said. Raise an army
among your people, and exterminate
yourselves.
In our inferior backwardness
we took the money. Raised an army
among our people.
And now, the people protected, we wait
for the next insulting words
coming out of that mouth.
LISTEN
Listen,
I never dreamed
I would learn to love you so.
You are as flawed
as my vision
As short tempered
as my breath.
Every time you say
you love me
I look for shelter.
But these matters are small.
Lying entranced
by your troubled life
within as without your arms
I am once again
Scholarly.
Studying a way
that is not mine.
Proof of evolution’s
variegation.
You would choose
you say.
Except perhaps
as rock or tree.
But listen, love. Though human,
that is what you are
already
to this student, absorbed.
Human tree and rock already,
to me.
S M
I tell you, Chickadee
I am afraid of people
who cannot cry
Tears left unshed
turn to poison
in the ducts
Ask the next soldier you see
enjoying a massacre
if this is not so.
People who do not cry
are victims
of soul mutilation
paid for in Marlboros
and trucks.
Resist.
Violence does not work
except for the man
who pays your salary
Who knows
if you could still weep
you would not take the job.
THE DIAMONDS ON LIZ’S BOSOM
The diamonds on Liz’s bosom
are not as bright
as his eyes
the morning they took him
to work in the mines
The rubies in Nancy’s
jewel box (Oh, how he
loves red!)
not as vivid
as the despair
in his children’s
frowns.
Oh, those Africans!
Everywhere you look
they’re bleeding
and crying
Crying and bleeding
on some of the whitest necks
in your town.
WE ALONE
We alone can devalue gold
by not caring
if it falls or rises
in the marketplace.
Wherever there is gold
there is a chain, you know,
and if your chain
is gold
so much the worse
for you.
Feathers, shells
and sea-shaped stones
are all as rare.
This could be our revolution:
To love what is plentiful
as much as
what’s scarce.
ATTENTIVENESS
When you can no longer
eat
for thinking of those
who starve
is the time to look
beneath the skin
of someone close to you.
Relative, I see the bones
shining
in your face
your hungry eye
prominent as a skull.
I see your dreams
are ashes
that attentiveness alone
does not feed you.
1971
I have learned this winter that, yes,
I am afraid to die,
even if I do it gently, controlling the rage
myself.
I think of our first week here,
when we bought the rifle to use
against the men
who prowled the street
glowering at this house.
Then it seemed so logical
to shoot to kill. The heart, untroubled;
the head, quite clear of thought.
I dreamed those creatures falling stunned and bloody
across our gleaming floor,
and woke up smiling
at how natural it is to
defend one’s life.
(And I will always defend my own, of course.)
But now, I think, although it is natural,
it must continue to be hard;
or “the enemy” becomes the abstraction
he is to those TV faces
we see leering over bodies
they have killed in war. The head on the stick,
the severed ears and genitals
do not conjure up
for mere killers
higher mathematics, the sound of jazz or a baby’s fist;
the leer abides.
It is those faces, we know,
that should have died.
EVERY MORNING
Every morning I exercise
my body.
It complains
“Why are you doing this to me?”
I give it a plié
in response.
I heave my legs
off the floor
and feel my stomach muscles
rebel:
they are mutinous
there are rumblings
of dissent.
I have other things
to show,
but mostly, my body.
“Don’t you see that person
staring at you?” I ask my breasts,
which are still capable
of staring back.
“If I didn’t exercise
you couldn’t look up
that far.
Your life would be nothing
but shoes.”
“Let us at least say we’re doing it
for ourselves”;
my fingers are eloquent;
they never sweat.
HOW POEMS ARE
MADE/A
DISCREDITED VIEW
Letting go
in order to hold on
I gradually understand
how poems are made.
There is a place the fear must go.
There is a place the choice must go.
There is a place the loss must go.
The leftover love.
The love that spills out
of the too full cup
and runs and hides
its too full self
in shame.
I gradually comprehend
how poems are made.
To the upbeat flight of memories.
The flagged beats of the running
heart.
I understand how poems are made.
They are the tears
that season the smile.
The stiff-neck laughter
that crowds the throat.
The leftover love.
I know how poems are made.
There is a place the loss must go.
There is a place the gain must go.
The leftover love.
MISSISSIPPI
WINTER I
If I had erased my life there
where the touchdown more than race
holds attention now
how martyred he would have been
his dedication to his work
how unquestionable!
But I am stoned and do not worry
—sitting in this motel room—
for when his footsteps at last disturb
the remnants of my self-pity
there will be nothing here
to point to his love of me
not even my appreciation.
MISSISSIPPI
WINTER II
When you remember me, my child,
be sure to recall that Mama was
a sinner. Her soul was lost
(according to her mama) the very
first time she questioned God. (It
weighed heavily on her, though she
did not like to tell.)
But she wanted to live and what is more
be happy
a concept not understood before the age
of twenty-one.
She was not happy
with fences.
MISSISSIPPI
WINTER III
I cradle my four-year-old daughter
in my arms
alarmed that already she smells
of Love-Is-True perfume.
A present from
her grandmother,
who loves her.
At twenty-nine my own gifts
of seduction
have been squandered. I rise
to Romance
as if it is an Occasional Test
in which my lessons of etiquette
will, thankfully, allow me to fail.
MISSISSIPPI
WINTER IV
My father and mother both
used to warn me
that “a whistling woman and a crowing
hen would surely come to
no good end.” And perhaps I should
have listened to them.
But even at the time I knew
that though my end probably might
not
be good
I must whistle
like a woman undaunted
until I reached it.
LOVE IS NOT
CONCERNED
love is not concerned
with whom you pray
or where you slept
the night you ran away
from home
love is concerned
that the beating of your heart
should kill no one.
SHE SAID:
She said: “When I was with him,
I used to dream of them together.
Making love to me, he was
making love to her.
That image made me come
every time.”
A woman lies alone