Call Us What We Carry

by Amanda Gorman

The closest we get to time travel Is our fears softening, Our hurts unclenching, As we become more akin

When all we knew of ourselves was love.

they’re documents with their pieces plucked out, just as some will call this the gone year, the long year, the glove year, the unlove year.

Hereby the pen looks to enhance, evoke, explore, expose the bodies, the truth, the voices that have always existed but have been exiled from history & the imagination. In this case, we erase to find.

God, take away the illness. Everyone grew Weaker & weaker.

People dy People should not have died. Most of them immigrants. These people came Promised Land. They came fresh & they got Destroyed.

we become sloppy & confused, crossed out, Scribbled in borders— It’s nearly impossible to track Tragedy & turmoil.

Words, too, are a type of combat, for we always become what we refuse to say.

What place have we in our histories except the present.

The word peace shares history With pact. That is to say, harmony Is a tomorrow we agree on.

A virus is fought inside us, While violence is fought amongst us. In both, our triumph is not in conquering others, But conquering the most destructive agents & instincts that we carry Within our mortal forms.

In the end, of course, we could not Speak those names found by humanity.

Now cannot put love into the past tense Above all, love—love very much. If love could cure! Each day slowly could not breathe. Life still lives.

The best way is with poems Remember We were beginning Dancing true New meaning New hope We have held this hope with the rest.

Grief, like glass, can be both a mirror & a window, enabling us to look both in & out, then & now & how. In other words, we become a window pain. Only somewhere in loss do we find the grace to gaze up & out of ourselves.

through poetry, We have recalled what was not ours, Made the past the same as our pang.

Never forget that to be alone Has always been a price for some & a privilege for others.

We always ask questions of those who came before. To be surveyed, then, is to have survived.

To be kept to the edges of existence is the inheritance of the marginalized.

This realization is not ours. It is. Art, if fact, Is both a method & a finding, An answer in the inquiry.

We have not been displaced. Yes. We have gone further than we’ve come.

You will be told this is not a problem, Not your problem. You will be told now is not the time For change to begin, Told that we cannot win.

the point of protest isn’t winning; It’s holding fast to the promise of freedom,

Black lives matter, No matter what. Black lives are worth living, Worth defending, Worth every struggle. We owe it to the fallen to fight, But we owe it to ourselves to never stay kneeling When the day calls us to stand.

Riots are red Violence is blue We’re sick of dying How ’bout you

we strobed That we came in peace, He was already at war. Because aren’t we all, Always?

In that moment, we desperately want To snort To scream To survive.

Nothing— & we mean nothing— Can keep you safe. Silence least of all. Speak with this giant life,

Our war has changed. Whoever said we never die In our dreams obviously Has never been Black. Sometimes the whole dusk pulls us down.

Death is no equalizer, Death equals nothing, Makes a 0 of a life. That is the machinery of this country.

Ripped apart. R. I. P. Ravaged In Pandemic. Rifled Innocent People. Razed Irreplaceable Persons. Look alive, everyone.

We were brought here & all we got was this lousy T-shirt,

We thought our country would burn. We thought our country would learn.

The truth is, we are one nation, under ghosts. The truth is, we are one nation, under fraud. Tell us, honestly: Will we ever be who we say.

Every second, what we feel For our people & our planet Almost brings us to our knees, A compassion that nearly destroys Us with its massiveness.

Grief depends on love. What we cherish most shall leave. But what we’ve changed can last, Chartered & chosen.

there’s something different on this golden morning. Something magical in the sunlight, wide & warming.

We ignite not in the light, but in lack thereof, For it is in loss that we truly learn to love. In this chaos, we will discover clarity. In suffering, we must find solidarity.

Do not ignore the pain. Give it purpose. Use it. Read children’s books, dance alone to DJ music. Know that this distance will make our hearts grow fonder. From these waves of woes our world will emerge stronger.

We write Because you might listen. We write because We are lost & lonely, & you, like us, Are looking & learning.

We are not all heroes, but we are all at least human. This is not a closing, but an opening, a widening—not a yawn but a scream, a poem sung. What will we admit of & into ourselves.

This timeline, naturally, will never be complete. The sample is never simple, is always insufficient at invoking the insufferable. There is no one way to count who & what counted most to us in that dark.

Our future is a sea Flooded with sun, Our souls, so solar & soldiering. There is a cut of that burning in us all.

As the world came apart, We have come together.

The densest despair takes Us to no ordinary joy.

We will not stir stones. We shall make mountains.

Love is justified by loving.

Our story is not a circle carved, But a spiral shed/shaped/spinning, Shifting inward & outward ad infinitum, Like a lung on the bank of speech.

Time arcs into itself. It is not a repeat, but a reckoning.

Words matter, for Language is an ark. Yes, Language is an art, An articulate artifact. Language is a life craft. Yes, Language is a life raft.