A Poem Traveled Down My Arm (4 page)
25
We must
dream
our
way
out
of this.
Strive
to remember
it is not
normal
to
live
in
terror
of
the water
in
your
glass.
Friendship
is
antidote
to
poison.
Do not
be
like
cows
grazing
watching
the
butcher.
If we are true
to Her
The Goddess
will come
to us.
She will
seem
odd.
And
I will go
on
blessing
old
revolutionaries
who
stand
their
ground
small
countries
that
never
give
up
I will go
on
believing
that
even
if
provoked
it is
inappropriate
to
bomb
teenagers
& that
infants
are not
to
blame
for fouling
their
societies
I will
go
on
believing
that
love
is
the future
that
I deserve
Peace
the future
whose
time
has
come.
About the Author
ALICE WALKER won the Pulitzer Prize and
the American Book Award for her novel
The Color Purple,
which was preceded by
The Third Life of Grange Copeland
and
Meridian.
Her other bestselling novels include
By the Light of
My Father’s Smile, Possessing the Secret of Joy,
and
The Temple of My Familiar.
She is also
the author of three collections of short stories,
three collections of essays, six previous volumes of
poetry, and several children’s books. Her books
have been translated into more than two dozen
languages. Born in Eatonton, Georgia,
Walker now lives in Northern California.
ALSO BY ALICE WALKER
FICTION
The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart
By the Light of My Father’s Smile
Possessing the Secret of Joy
The Temple of My Familiar
The Color Purple
You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down
Meridian
In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women
The Third Life of Grange Copeland
NONFICTION ON
Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit
Anything We Love Can Be Saved
The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult
Warrior Marks
(with Pratibha Parmar)
Living by the Word
In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens
POEMS
Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth
Her Blue Body Everything We Know
Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful
Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning
Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems
Once
COPYRIGHT © 2003 BY ALICE WALKER
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House,
an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Walker, Alice,
A poem traveled down my arm: poems and drawings / by Alice Walker.
p. cm.
I. Title.
PS3573.A425P64 2003
81’.54—dc21 2003047070
Random House website address:
www.atrandom.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-43044-1
v3.0