i am accused of tending to the past
by Lucille Clifton
i am accused of tending to the past as if i made it,
as if i sculpted it
with my own hands. i did not.
this past was waiting for me
when i came,
a monstrous unnamed baby,
and i with my mother’s itch
took it to breast
and named it
History.
she is more human now,
learning language everyday,
remembering faces, names and dates.
when she is strong enough to travel
on her own, beware, she will.
Lucille Clifton holds a special place in my heart. The former poet laureate of Maryland, namesake of my trusty car, she is one of my hometown & personal heroes.
Within this poem, I keep coming back to the lines: “this past was waiting for me / when I came.” No one enters a story without baggage. We arrive in life and immediately step into stories about our families, lineages, & histories — none of which we can claim to have fully architected ourselves.
I’ve been thinking since last year about forgiveness: what it means, who/what has defined it for me, the relationship forgiveness has to memory. What we choose to remember is important; what we choose to forget, equally so.
This poem also offers me a hopeful reminder of the existence of the histories we do control, the ones we have the opportunity to sculpt with our own hands. The genesis of our new stories may be humble, but one day, they will become the History of our lives, all grown up, capable of travel.
A few lesser-known quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for your week:
“The tokenism Negroes condemn is recognizable because it is an end in itself. Its purpose is not to begin a process, but instead to end the process of protest and pressure. It is a hypocritical gesture, not a constructive first step.”
- from “The Sword That Heals”, Why We Can’t Wait“…the Negro is not unmindful of or indifferent to the progress that has already been made… If he is still saying, ‘Not enough,’ it is because he does not feel that he should be expected to be grateful for the halting and inadequate attempts of his society to catch up with the basic rights he ought to have inherited automatically, centuries ago, by virtue of his membership in the human family and his American birthright.”
- from “The Sword That Heals”, Why We Can’t Wait
“Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily…. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
- Letter from Birmingham Jail“One has not only a legal but moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’”
- Letter from Birmingham Jail
Ahhh she is one of my faves. I own "The Collected Poems of Lucille..." I love just randomly flipping to a page. Beautiful piece.
"No one enters a story without baggage. We arrive in life and immediately step into stories about our families, lineages, & histories — none of which we can claim to have fully architected ourselves."