Lucille Clifton: Blues in the Night

National Poetry Month seems to have spilled over into May as I'm still getting "Poem-A-Day" emails and it's a good thing, too. Since there was, at best, a handful of poems worth writing home about, it was refreshing to see this powerful, moving, mysterious piece by Lucille Clifton, one of our finest bringers of the word:

sorrows

who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be

beautiful who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals

that they would attach themselves
as scars attach and ride the skin

sometimes we hear them in our dreams
rattling their skulls clicking

their bony fingers
they have heard me beseeching

as i whispered into my own
cupped hands enough not me again

but who can distinguish
one human voice

amid such choruses
of desire

Lucille Clifton

Here is a video of Clifton reading two poems, "Aunt Jemima" and "Afterblues" at the Geraldine Dodge Poetry Festival:







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Today is the anniversary of the passing of blues harp great, Paul Butterfield. Here he works out on the classic Charles Brown version of "Driftin' Blues."

the night is long
my bottle, empty
my house, set apart

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don