“What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?” ~ Audre Lorde, from “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”
Tuesday late afternoon, cloudy with drizzle, 56 degrees.
Today is the birthday of poet, essayist, novelist, and activist Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934-November 17, 1992). Lorde died in 1992 after years of battling cancer; the illness led to her first prose collection, The Cancer Journals (1980), in which she wrote about her struggle to overcome breast cancer and the resultant mastectomy. Her posthumous collection of essays, A Burst of Light (1988), won the National Book Award. Altogether, Lorde wrote 18 books of poems and essays and won numerous awards, including a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts. A self-termed “poet, warrior, feminist, mother, pioneer, lover, survivor, ” Lorde espoused causes related to feminism, in particular black feminism, racism, and gay rights.
For more, visit The Heroine Collective here, or the New York State Writers’ Institute here.
A Litany for Survival
For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours:
For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.
And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive
Movement Song
I have studied the tight curls on the back of your neck
moving away from me
beyond anger or failure
your face in the evening schools of longing
through mornings of wish and ripen
we were always saying goodbye
in the blood in the bone over coffee
before dashing for elevators going
in opposite directions
without goodbyes.
Do not remember me as a bridge nor a roof
as the maker of legends
nor as a trap
door to that world
where black and white clericals
hang on the edge of beauty in five oclock elevators
twitching their shoulders to avoid other flesh
and now
there is someone to speak for them
moving away from me into tomorrows
morning of wish and ripen
your goodbye is a promise of lightning
in the last angels hand
unwelcome and warning
the sands have run out against us
we were rewarded by journeys
away from each other
into desire
into mornings alone
where excuse and endurance mingle
conceiving decision.
Do not remember me
as disaster
nor as the keeper of secrets
I am a fellow rider in the cattle cars
watching
you move slowly out of my bed
saying we cannot waste time
only ourselves.
Music by Rhiannon Giddens, “Shake Sugaree”
Lola's Curmudgeonly Musings 