From quilting: poems 1987-1990, pg 49, Boa Ltd. Softcover Edition, 1991.
1
when i stand around among poets
i am embarrassed mostly,
their long white heads,
the great bulge in their pants,
their certainties.
i don’t know how to do
what i do in the way
that i do it. it happens
despite me and i pretend
to deserve it.
but i don’t know how to do it.
only sometimes when
something is singing
and so far
i hear.
2
when i stand around
among poets, sometimes
i hear a single music
in us, one note
dancing us through the
singular moving world.
Lucille Clifton
