here yet be dragons

so many languages have fallen
off of the edge of the world
into the dragon’s mouth. some

where there be monsters whose teeth
are sharp and sparkle with lost

people. lost poems. who
among us can imagine ourselves
unimagined? who

among us can speak with so fragile
tongue and remain proud?

The poetry of Lucille Clifton (1936-2010) is unlike anyone else’s. Superficially, the political ideals and human experiences it voices have been the focus of much 20th and 21st century African American poetry. But Clifton, one of the pioneers in the genre, favours unusually short, sharp “snapshots” of a moment. Some are humorous, others tell “terrible stories” of loss, pain and illness, but, however intense the theme, Clifton’s manner avoids intricate self-searching or philosophising. Her poetic figures are plain, apt and hardworking. Formal innovations (gapping, use of lower-case throughout, etc) seem an almost shy gesture of resistance to poetic self-importance.

Despite the terseness, these poems invite consent and empathy. While Christianity’s laws and stories underlie her moral universe, Clifton avoids the pulpit. In fact, she can sound like a female RS Thomas, slyly putting the Almighty in his place: “I am the good daughter who stays at home/ singing and sewing/ when I whisper He strains to hear me and/ He does whatever I say.” (my dream about God).

Clifton believed she was, as African tradition expresses it, “a two-headed woman” – ie a woman in conversation with spirits. She named her spirits “the ones” – and it seems they went in for a little poetry criticism besides the prophecy, commenting, “your tongue/ is useful/ not unusual”. That assessment perhaps was a projection of her own enabling modesty and pragmatism.

This week’s poem first appeared in The Book of Light in 1993, a collection belonging to the grim era of the Gulf war and the conservative backlash exemplified by Republican Senator Jesse Helms. Racism, misogyny and militarism are the monsters against which Clifton is writing in here yet be dragons. Light, embodied in the poet’s first name, begins with understanding what it is they threaten.

The poem isn’t contained by the moral darkness close by, but sets sail from its title to broader waters. When long-ago cartographers reached the limit of the known world, they allegedly marked their maps with the rubric, “here be dragons” – though researchers now claim it was only on one occasion. Clifton lifts the phrase from apocryphal quaintness into modernity by her qualifier, “yet”. Our world as she sees it is still stalked by open-jawed megafauna, “whose teeth/ are sharp and sparkle with lost/ people. lost poems.”

Before getting to the loss of people, we meet the languages which “have fallen/ off of the edge of the world …” One of Clifton’s simple but ample metaphors, this one incorporates the death of actual human languages which have been lost, destroyed by colonisation and other forces of hierarchy, with a broader definition of language: what can be spoken about, what can be remembered or interpreted. People themselves, like poems but more importantly, are systems of language: “lost/ people. lost poems”. All are reduced to the fragmented sparkle on the dragons’ teeth.

The crucial question, asked in the third verse is “who/ among us can imagine ourselves/ unimagined?” This is mind-stopping. We have to pause and work at the idea of being “unimagined”. It reminded me of the old saying that no person has truly died until no one is left on earth who remembers their name. The poem drives an even bleaker wind through the spaces it conjures, an ultimate abandonment of the living by the living. Already, on a domestic level, the sense of being unimagined is a daily occurrence. Why is it so dispiriting to talk on the phone to some call-centre bot, or to hear a politician generalising about that ghostly, featureless creature, “the public” (has he ever met one?) Being unimagined will probably be the default human condition when AI has world domination.

The moral force field in this 10-line poem is vast, and exempts no one from causing loss or being lost. Its subject is humanity, of course, not our machines: its concern is with the brutal consequences when we refuse to imagine others. The final question (lines 8-10) unexpectedly remembers the importance of “pride”. Clifton’s mother apparently used to tell her when she was a young girl, “Be proud, you’re from Dahomey women”. Pride, as self-respect divorced from arrogance, is the deepest value and shield a dispossessed person can recover. It’s the atypical grammatical construction in “who … can speak with so fragile/ tongue” which makes the physicality of voice and language suddenly tangible. We might have expected “so fragile a tongue”, or “such a fragile tongue”. Instead, “so fragile/ tongue” illustrates the moment when language is most highly idiomatic, and most at risk of slipping away.

here yet be dragons is among the poems included in Lucille Clifton’s New and Selected Poems, Blessing the Boats, first published in 2000. It’s a relatively slim volume, but for readers who may not have very much acquaintance with Clifton’s work, it’s a beautiful, coherently organised introduction, and a fine spur to further reading.