Call Us What We Carry

by Amanda Gorman

History and elegy are akin. The word “history” comes from an ancient Greek verb ίστωρειν meaning “to ask.” One who asks about things—about their dimensions, weight, location, moods, names, holiness, smell—is an historian. But the asking is not idle. It is when you are asking about something that you realize you yourself have survived it, and so you must carry it, or fashion it into a thing that carries itself.

Still, we crouch before the lip of tomorrow,

The poet’s diagnosis is that what we have lived Has already warped itself into a fever dream, The contours of its shape stripped from the murky mind.

To be accountable we must render an account: Not what was said, but what was meant. Not the fact, but what was felt. What was known, even while unnamed.

For what is a record but a reckoning?

Distance can Distort our deepest Sense Of who We are,

The language we spoke Had no place for excited, Eager, laughter, joy, Friend, get together. The phrases that remained Were their own violence: That was sicckk!

We find the rhetoric of reunion By letting love reclaim our tongues, The tip of the teeth. Our hearts have always Been in our throats.

The simple gift of farewell. Goodbye, by which we say to another— Thanks for offering your life into mine. By Goodbye, we truly mean: Let us be able to say hello again.

We added a thousand false steps To our walk tracker today Because every step we’ve taken Has required more than we had to give.

Anxiety is a living body, Poised beside us like a shadow. It is the last creature standing, The only beast who loves us Enough to stay.

Even now handshakes & hugs are like gifts, Something we are shocked to grant, be granted. & so, we forage for anything That feels like this:

By Hello, we mean: Let us not say goodbye again. There is someone we would die for. Feel that fierce, unshifting truth, That braced & ready sacrifice. That’s what love does: It makes a fact faced beyond fear. We have lost too much to lose.

We are walking beside our ancestors, Their drums roar for us, Their feet stomp at our life. There is power in being robbed & still choosing to dance.

Even faceless, a smile can still Scale up our cheeks, Bone by bone, Our eyes crinkling Delicately as rice paper At some equally fragile beauty—

Just like seeds in a fresh-plowed field. When we dream, we act only with instinct. We might not be fully sure of all that we are. & yet we have endured all that we were.

& yet we remain. & still, we write. & so, we write. Watch us move above the fog Like a promontory at dusk. Shall this leave us bitter? Or better?

Grief, when it goes, does so softly, Like the exit of that breath We just realized we clutched.

Some distances, if allowed to grow, Are merely the greatest proximities.

Disease is physiological death, Loneliness is a social one, Where the old We collapses like a lung.

Some days, we just need a place Where we can bleed in peace. Our only word for this is Poem.

Some traumas flood past the body, An ache unbordered by bone. When we shift toward a kindred soul, It is with the cut of all our lives. Perhaps pain is like a name, Made to sing just for you.

Grief commands its own grammar, Structured by intimacy & imagination. We often say: We are beside ourselves with grief. We can’t even imagine. This means anguish can call us to envision More than what we believed was carriable

The hurt is how we know We are alive & awake; It clears us for all the exquisite, Excruciating enormities to come.

Grief grounding us in its sea. Despair exits us the same way it enters— Turning through the mouth. Even now conviction works Strange magic on our tongues.

I’m not telling you a story so much as a shipwreck—the pieces floating, finally legible.

This book, like a ship, is meant to be lived in.

Perhaps our relationships are the very make of us, For fellowship is both our nature & our necessity. We are formed primarily by what we imagine.

We, like the water, forget nothing, Forgo everything. Words, also like the water, Are a type of washing. Through them we cleanse ourselves Of what we are not.

That is to say, words Are how we are moored & unmarred.

We mourn the past More than we miss it. We revere the regular more Than we remember it honestly. Don’t we recognize All the ways Normal can S p utt e r & Die.

The earth is a magic act; Each second something beautiful On its stage vanishes, As if merely going home. We have no word For becoming a ghost or a memory.

To be a member of this place Is to remember its place, Its longitude of longing. This elegy, naturally, is insufficient. Say it plain. Call us who we left behind.

It’s not what was done that will haunt us, But what was withheld, What was kept out & kept away.

Our wounds, too, are our windows. Through them we watch the world.

(& tell us: what is the hour But a rotation by which we mark our grief).

In history’s form, we find our own faces, Recognizable but unremembered, Familiar yet forgotten.

Without language nothing can live At all, let alone Beyond itself.

Lost as we feel, there is no better Compass than compassion. We find ourselves not by being The most seen, but the most seeing.

We labor equally When we fall as when we rise. Always remember that What happened to us Happened through us.

Strength is separate from survival. What endures isn’t always what escapes & what is withered can still withstand.

Poetry is its own prayer, The closest words come to will.

If given the choice, we would not be Among the Chosen, But amidst the Changed.

The future isn’t attained. It is atoned, until It is at one with history,

In other words, Our scars are the brightest Parts of us.

Our remnants are revelation, Our requiem as raptus. When we bend into dirt We’re truth preserved Without our skin.

Life is not what is promised, But what is sought. These bones, not what is found, But what we’ve fought. Our truth, not what we said, But what we thought. Our lesson, all we have taken & all we have brought.

Some griefs, like rivers, are uncross / able. They are not to be waded across / but walked beside.

The celestial Stitched inside us.

But why alliteration? Why the pulsing percussion, the string of syllables? It is the poet who pounds the past back into you.