I can barely recall her song the
scent of her hands
though her wild hair scratches my dreams
at night.
In this poem, the narrator recalls how much she longs to be able to see and visit with her long-dead mother. In this stanza, the narrator explains that she is beginning to lose some of her fondest and clearest memories of her mother, and she longs to have them back. The mother visits the narrator in her dreams, but this is not enough. Rather, the narrator wishes for God to return her to her mother, so that she may better be able to recall some of her fondest memories, experiences, and emotions.
the time i dropped your almost body
down down to meet the waters under the city
and run one with the sewage to the sea [...]
In this quotation, which opens Clifton’s poem, the narrator begins by describing how she disposed of the baby she miscarried. As the narrator did not want to keep the baby, namely because she couldn’t take care of it to the best of her ability, she decides to dispose of the baby’s body by dropping the dead fetus into the sewer, where it will be washed away from her physical grasp and proverbial memory. She does this to erase all evidence of the baby from her life.
we would have made the thin
walk over genesee hill into the canada wind
to watch you slip like ice into strangers’ hands.
In this sobering poem, the narrator describes the emotional turmoil of losing a baby. During this quotation, the narrator describes how she would have had the baby aborted if she had not lost in naturally. She describes walking over a hill into Canada, where she would have had legal access to an abortion. The strangers’ hands would have been the hands of a doctor or nurse, who would have whisked away the dead and naked baby. In this way, this stanza captures the heart-rending decision the narrator was forced to make, as well as the dark reality of the abortion she was considering.
I seemed to be drawn
to the center of myself
leaving the edges of me
in the hands of my wife
and I saw with the most amazing
clarity
so that I had not eyes but
sight […]
In this stanza, Clifton imagines what the death of her husband must have been like from his perspective. This opening stanza describes the death of her husband, as he is drawn into himself. We see from this stanza that Fred Clifton died in the arms of his wife and died a fleeting death. In his last moments, Fred is able to see with “the most amazon clarity,” which implies that he is crossing over to the other side, where he is privy to the ultimate sight, knowledge, and clarity. In other words, in his final moments, Fred was able to witness and understand the whole of everything in the universe—ultimate sight.
