For Lucille Clifton

I have heard
poems that made me think
of poetry as being taken up
strange ways, blindfolded
to a secret window in the
attic where the sullen words say
look out through here
on this stolen world

I hear you, Lucille,
and instead I see your face
with its mouth and its
tongue
and there behind the tongue
your soul moves unashamed

and then how I was
overcome
by this:
I recognized this soul

is my own soul
made beautiful.

I hear your body be
gone now.
God
rest you.
God rest you.