My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams—
The panoply of war, the martial tred of men,
Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death,
Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath—
But—I must sit and sew.
I sit and sew—my heart aches with desire—
That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
Once men. My soul in pity flings
Appealing cries, yearning only to go
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe—
But—I must sit and sew.
The little useless seam, the idle patch;
Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,
When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,
Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?
You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream
That beckons me—this pretty futile seam,
It stifles me—God, must I sit and sew?
(Ed note: I've spent most of this day wrestling with an especially challenging sewing project and while doing so have been listening to the WQXR radio day-long celebration of Juneteenth, the commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. Sewing is a mostly solitary activity and since taking it up a couple of years ago, I've done a lot of thinking about how it connects me to my ancestors (both of my grandmothers were garment workers in sweatshops during the early part of the last century) and how domestic work that is necessary is also devalued especially when it is done primarily by women. This came into greater relief recently, when armies of home sewists and quilters stepped up to make masks, myself among them, for healthcare and other workers. It didn't take long for me to wonder if sewing had been an inspiration, or jumping off point, for poems and it was by following this train of thought that I discovered Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson's "I Sit and Sew." Sewing is an imperative for her–the patching and mending necessary to extend the life of clothing–but is doesn't constrain her imagination, which takes her to terrifying scenes of war, destruction, and despair.
Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson graduated from Straight University in 1892 and attended Cornell University. She was a poet, author of short stories and dramas, newspaper columnist, and editor of two anthologies.Dunbar-Nelson was an influential figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Find out more about her remarkable life here.)
— Stacey Lehman