Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful

BOOK: Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful
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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

Listening to you.

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

not to come back again,

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

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