Sherley Anne Williams: 1944-1999
By Michael Harper

Worshiped
in the fields

sometimes
in darkness

heat
at highnoon

killing fields
but after water

fluorescent
crops

braceros
picked

you sent me a tape
short and full

of healing music
(I copied it for my mother)

put you in every book
I could read or write

remember
your commentaries

at public
tables

in and out
of the university

outtakes are best
your heart a map

ancestors weeping

From Copyright © Michael Harper. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the author

Copyright © 1997-2007 by Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.

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