#NPM2020 Day 19: Movement Song, by Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde, a deeply influential womanist activist, is an example of a person who I would not call primarily a poet, but whose poetry is important to me. I bring this up because I’ve often heard friends explain that poetry feels like a far-off, inaccessible art, or like a thing that you must either engage your entire being into, and build your identity around, or accept that it is not for you. But I think Audre Lorde is a great example of someone (there are many more, even in the 30 poets I highlight this month) that show us that this doesn’t have to be true! Poetry can be a dimension of the things that you do, not a thing that you inherently are or are not. Audre Lorde was so many great things and she also wrote poetry.
We’ve talked about a couple different poems this month where the title plays an integral role. Reading about Audre Lorde ending a relationship with someone she clearly loves very much packaged up with the title of “Movement Song” was really a game-changer for me as a very-recently-adult; I grew up with a very rigid view that good relationships last and bad relationships don’t. Reading this poem was the first time that I understood that each relationship’s fabric is made up of a million unique threads, and time is only one of them. I think about “we were rewarded by journeys / away from each other” so often; it reminds me of Jack Gilbert’s later observation that Icarus also flew.
Sometimes, good poetry changes the way you see the world. This poem changed the way that I understood endings. Life is full of beginnings, and life is long, and so for most of us, life is also full of endings. I consider myself very lucky to have lived in a world where Audre helped me understand the song inherent to the ways we move toward and away from each other.
I have studied the tight curls on the back of your neck
moving away from me
beyond anger or failure
your face in the evening schools of longing
through mornings of wish and ripen
we were always saying goodbye
in the blood in the bone over coffee
before dashing for elevators going
in opposite directions
without goodbyes.
Do not remember me as a bridge nor a roof
as the maker of legends
nor as a trap
door to that world
where black and white clericals
hang on the edge of beauty in five oclock elevators
twitching their shoulders to avoid other flesh
and now
there is someone to speak for them
moving away from me into tomorrows
morning of wish and ripen
your goodbye is a promise of lightning
in the last angels hand
unwelcome and warning
the sands have run out against us
we were rewarded by journeys
away from each other
into desire
into mornings alone
where excuse and endurance mingle
conceiving decision.
Do not remember me
as disaster
nor as the keeper of secrets
I am a fellow rider in the cattle cars
watching
you move slowly out of my bed
saying we cannot waste time
only ourselves.
From From A Land Where Other People Live, by Audre Lorde, published by W. W. Norton and Company Inc.. © 1973.
