Connecticut Poet Marilyn Nelson to Read

Marilyn Nelson is an African-American performance poet whose work uses and re-visions traditional English poetic forms to tell stories, history, and truth. She is the author of five poetry collections, including In the Fields of Praise, a 1997 National Book Award Nominee. Nelson is a professor of creative writing at University of Connecticut at Storrs. She will read Thursday, March 19, at 7:30 p.m. in Ayres 120 as part of the Writer's Voice Series. Her visit is co-sponsored by the Center for Multicultural and Gender Studies.

THE SACRAMENT OF POVERTY
by Marilyn Nelson	

	for Judy Maines-La Marre
	
	All the children on this ward are dying of AIDS.
	The sister opens the door to two hundred and ten
	quiet cribs lined in such tight ranks
	you can barely squeeze between.  This is not
	an unpaid advertisement:  You left your family,
	the local value of your surname, your wind-tight house,
	electricity, the safe water we turn on and drink,
	and went for two weeks to Haiti,
	to hold out your arms from a rocking-chair.
	One by one babies were handed to you,
	their skin smooth as black milk.
	Gradually they remembered touch,
	met your gaze, surrendered smiles.
	One tottered through three wards to find you again;
	he stood beside your chair, his cheek pressed to your arm.
	All you can do, you said later, is hold them
	and love them.  And let them go.

	And now this grief,  Judy.
	Each day another square to ex through.
	You said you were helpless, dumb,
	humbled by their pure poverty.
	I never even started
	your wedding poem.