won’t you celebrate with me by Lucille Clifton

won’t you celebrate with me
by Lucille Clifton

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

---

Lucille Clifton captures so beautifully this sense of being human, of being caught between this and that, starshine and clay. I resonated so deeply with this, being nonwhite and woman myself, and to be on this journey towards becoming ever more both oneself and loosening the hold on that at the same time.

Clifton wrote this in her late fifties, after raising six children, surviving cancer, surviving the deaths of her husband and two of her children, and writing poem after poem that refused to make Black women's lives palatable to white literary sensibilities. The poem is constantly read at graduations, at women's gatherings, at memorial services for Black women, at the inaugurations of Black women in public life. I think this poem is glorious.