Poem of the Week: Alice Walker

The World We Want Is Us

It moves my heart to see your awakened faces;

the look of "aha!"

shining, finally, in

so many

wide open eyes.

Yes, we are the 99%

all of us

refusing to forget

each other

no matter, in our hunger, what crumbs

are dropped by

the 1%.

The world we want is on the way; Arundhati

and now we

are

hearing her breathing.

That world we want is Us; united; already moving

into it.

-Alice Walker

Written by Alice Walker specifically for Occupy Writers.

Used by permission.

Writer and activist Alice Walker is the author of more than thirty-five volumes of fiction, poetry, and essays. Her work has been translated into more than two dozen languages. She has won numerous awards and honors, including the Lillian Smith Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts & Letters, and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute, a Merrill Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in Mendocino, California.

Alice Walker will be reading at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, March 22-25, 2012. Join us!

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