Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful Read online

  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

  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