Past Noon: Approaching Eternity
Still from Pahokee
Audre Lorde had an eternal sense of her own being. When she was writing The Black Unicorn her first poetry book for a major press, she felt like she was in conversation with an “Ancestor Audre.” When she wrote Undersong a book of revisions of her earlier poems, she felt that she was being the teacher, older sister, mentor that her younger poet self would have always wanted, and when she spoke to Mari Evans in the interview that would become known as “My Words Will Be There,” she predicted that after she died, her words would continue to be part of the conversation, words that future Black women might agree with or disagree with, but whose presence would impact what they (as in we) did. Indeed, Audre Lorde’s work is prologue for so many of us, the ways we understand multiplicity and navigate institutions, the grace and complexity we offer to herself. I know for a fact that since I found Audre Lorde as a teenagers, my writing has always been in relation to hers. In fact, every essay I wrote for the rest of high school had an epigraph from one of her poems.
We certainly felt Audre Lorde’s presence during our intensive writing time together in the “My Words Will Be There” online intensive. We felt ourselves answering the call Audre Lorde made to fill what she saw as a vacuum around her, but she called across time to create the community she felt her work deserved and here we are. It was beautiful and poignant to notice that as we did our own healing, did the work of calling in what was missing in our own stories and journeys through this life, we were also in communion with Lorde. In a direct way, loving ourselves rigorously is fulfillment of and participation in the prophecies Audre Lorde made to save her own life, to speak her own truth, to source her own bravery, which is now collective in many forms. During the writing intensive we traveled backwards and forwards, speaking life to our younger selves and reaching beyond our lives to our relationships with what we hope will long outlive our breathing. Please take a deep breath and enjoy this poem that we created together, inspired by Audre Lorde’s “Prologue.”
P.S. If you want to sign up for our last writing intensive of the decade, “Cycles: The Unlearning Intensive” the information is here: http://brillianceremastered.alexispauline.com/2019/12/16/cycles-the-unlearning-intensive/
If you want to participate in this week’s Solstice Prep Deep Dive (Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals) sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/deep-dive-solstice-prep-session-black-feminist-lessons-from-marine-mammals-tickets-86291166201
Past Noon
by the participants in the “My Words Will Be There” Intensive
“Somewhere in the landscape past noon/I shall leave a dark print/of the me that I am/and who I am not…
And the grasses will still be/Singing.”
-Audre Lorde “Prologue” (1971)
And the children will still be dancing.
And the spirit will still be shining.
And the oceans will still be undulating.
And the blue will still be deep.
And the guides will still be pleased.
And the air will still be laughing.
And the vibrations will still be accessible.
And the truth will still be here.
And the poems will still be sung.
And the image will still be changing.
And the analyses will still be valued.
And the children will still be growing.
And the babies will still be free.
And the dreams will still be manifesting.
And the love will still be here.
And the soup will still be on.
And the love will still be infinite.
And the listening will still be happening.
And the breathing will still be happening.
And the healing will still be happening.
And the laughter will still be present.
And the oracle will still be everywhere.
And the joy will still be profound.
And the kisses will still be fierce.
And the she wolf will still be howling.
And the sound will still be creation.
And the ancestors will still be delighted.
And the sky will still be sky.
And the joy will still be manifest.
And the flowers will still be blooming.
