AfroPoets Famous Writers
COMPASS
This year the size of a sea
Sick to its stomach.
Like a page, we are only legible
When opened to one another.
For what is a book
If not foremost a body,
Waiting & wanting-
Yearning to be whole,
Full of itself. This book is full
Of ourselves. The past is one
Passionate déjà vu,
One scene already seen.
In history's form, we find our own faces,
Recognizable but unremembered,
Familiar yet forgotten.
Please.
Do not ask us who we are.
The hardest part of grief
Is giving it a name.
The pain pulls us apart,
Like lips about to speak.
Without language nothing can live
At all, let alone
Beyond itself.
Lost as we feel, there is no better
Compass than compassion.
We find ourselves not by being
The most seen, but the most seeing.
We watch a toddler
Freewheel through warm grass,
Not fleeing, just running, the way rivers do,
For it is in their unfettered nature.
We smile, our whole face cleared
By that single dazzling thing.
How could we not be altered.
Written by Amanda Gorman
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