The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

by Audre Lorde

What My Child Learns of the Sea What my

We are each of us both shorelines A left country where time suffices And the right land Where pearls roll into earth and spring up day. Joined our bodies have passage into one Without a merging As this slim necklace anchored into night.

darting out between a police car and what used to be Jim Atkin’s the all-night diner on the corner of Fourth Street where we sat making bets the last time I saw you on how many busts we could count through the plateglass

Remember our sun is not the most noteworthy star only the nearest.

that respect meant keeping our distance in silence averting our eyes from each other’s face in the street from the beautiful dark mouth and cautious familiar eyes passing alone.

while we avoided each other’s eyes and we learned to know lonely as the earth learns to know dead

only strange laughing testaments vomiting promise like love but look at the skeleton children advancing against us beneath their faces there is no sunlight no darkness no heart remains no legends to bring them back as women into their bodies at dawn.

To what death shall I look for comfort? Which mirror to break or mourn?

in this carnival of memories I name you both the laying down of power the separation I cannot yet make after all these years of blood my eyes are glued like fury to the keyholes of yesterday rooms where I wander solitary as a hunting cheetah at play with legends call disaster due all women who refuse to wait in vain;

compromise is a coffin nail rusty as seaweed

my pathways are strewn with old discontents outgrown defenses still sturdy as firebrick unlovely and dangerous as measles they wither into uselessness but do not decay.

Because I do not wish to remember but love to caress the deepest bone of me begging shes that wax and wane like moonfire

I battle old ghosts of you wearing the shapes of me surrounded by black and white faces saying no over and over becoming my mother draped in my fathers bastard ambition growing dark secrets out from between her thighs and night ...

I have died too many deaths that were not mine.

who forego the vanities of silence who war and weep sometimes against our selves in each other rather than our enemies falsehoods

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.

only many women who whisper I was always a virgin because I never remained.

when we kissed stone into dust eternally hungry paying respect to the crippled earth in silence and in tears surely one star fell as the mountain collapsed over our bodies surely the moon blinked once as our vigils began.

I see much better now and my eyes hurt.