"I Will Keep Broken Things" is a gift from the incomparable Alice Walker, renowned novelist, poet, human rights activist, and self-described "womanist," known for literary work that illuminates the specific experiences of Black women in America and explores the dynamic tension between human capacities for love, brutality, divisiveness, and connection.
Here, Walker composes an ode to the broken - from the material to the existential - with a dedication, gratitude, and reverence that is not often bestowed upon them. In content, language, and structure, it reads as an altar to brokenness: a place where the broken shards, tattered remains, painful histories, and losses and griefs of our lives can be seen and honored; held, even, as holy.
How distinct her approach is from our tendencies to quickly discard, fix, or try to transform that which is broken; strategies that may work well for shattered picture frames, but become more complicated with shattered hearts. And yet even for those shattered frames, she suggests, there is value in allowing the broken to be broken. For each broken thing holds a story, a history, an impact, perhaps even a beauty that may not be fully realized unless we are willing to stay - uncomfortable as it may be - with the reality of that brokenness.
The strength, clarity, and steadfastness of the voice of this poem has me asking: is there a way in which this willingness to “keep broken things” is itself transformative? Not, perhaps, to the broken entity itself, but to our own increasing capacities to lovingly, honestly, courageously, bear the truth. Walker’s poem invites me to consider how making space for the broken may be a way into wholeness – into a fuller, more heartfelt understanding of the complexity of our own and others’ lives, and of the realities in which we find ourselves.
May you, dear reader, pilgrim of sorrow, hold any brokenness you encounter this week with love, honoring its truth and importance to the whole.
I will keep
broken things:
The big clay
pot
with raised
iguanas
chasing
their
tails;
two
of their
wise
heads
sheared
off;
I will keep
broken
things:
The old
slave
market
basket
brought
to my
door
by Mississippi
a jagged
hole
gouged
in its sturdy
dark
oak
side.
I will keep
broken things:
The memory
of
those
long
delicious
night
swims
with
you;
I will keep
broken
things:
In my house
there
remains
an
honored
shelf
on which
I will
keep
broken
things.
Their beauty
is
they
need
not
ever
be ‘fixed.’
I will keep
your
wild
free
laughter
though
it is now
missing
its
reassuring
and
graceful
hinge.
I will keep
broken
things:
Thank you
so much!
I will keep
Broken
Things.
I will keep
you:
pilgrim
of
sorrow.
I will keep
myself.
~Alice Walker
For a rare please, listen to Alice Walker read her poem, “I Will Keep Broken Things,” here (3 min watch).