Let Me Stand Up

This poem has Clarke grappling with one the central themes of his later writing: aging. The struggle against racism and seemingly relentless procession of police violence and white indifference are all recast here as an exhausting burden for an aging man to contend with. The poet longs for a future in which he might slip into the night unremarked upon and merely walk the “criminal night” with nothing more than a “literary thought on my arm.” This poem is undated but, based on the letterhead and format of the original, is likely from the early 1980s.

Let me be able to stand up, old,

When I’m past standing up

In youth: when age has bent

Me rusty, a hairpin superfluous

As neglect; when bed and toilet

Sleeping and waking, fade

Into one long television afternoon

Of snowflakes and of screams;

When I can walk the streets

With a simple stick for walking,

Not for knocking necessary heads,

When I can put the pen down, late

In the criminal night, and walk

With a literary thought on my arm,

And have no taxis stop, nor cop cars

Pause to see who the hell is out

So black, so late in this mumbling walk

With a woman in his thought

Walking arm on mind, with me

In the early fornicating hours

Of broken husbands and homeward lovers

Loveless, as four-legged garbagemen

Their heads downward in a sniffing prayer.

Let me be able to pause, if need be,

On the weight of my years, aimless

On a shiny washed and recent side street

Without one bead of anticipated fear

For the assaulting bouqyuet of a cop;

Without the needless need to hurry

Anywhere, when all my age demands

Is a short pause on its heavy stick.