Hilaria Batista de Almeida, Provider by Marilyn Nelson

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend April 29, 2015   Hilaria Batista de Almeida, Provider   Marilyn Nelson

Sisterhood of the Good Death, Bahia, Brazil August 14, ca. 1850   Tomorrow, after we’ve led the procession following Our Lady of the Good Death back to our chapel, two hundred Sisters, in our white eyelet headwraps and dresses and the company of the Ancestors, will dance a Glory samba, with our neighbors like us redeemed, and those we work to free. We’ll dance as if we don’t know aches and pains, to celebrate the best death of all time.   No death is easy, but some deaths are good. The free die good deaths. The people we free will be put down with honor and music. The best death was the one Our Lady had, passing directly from breath to glory. Glory is ours, too, just one death from now. What dies lives on no longer slave, but free: The same essence, wearing another face, like an orixa changed into a saint.   Tomorrow is Our Lady’s Assumption Day. Today we sit in our rooms to prepare, searching the dark silence to find glory. My still hands, thick from cutting sugarcane… and there it is, that flood of thanksgiving. These nimble fingers that can tell from touch the best tobacco leaf and when to stop rolling a cigar smooth on the table, this year helped free thirty Yoruba slaves!            Copyright © 2015 by Marilyn Nelson. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “The Sisterhood of the Good Death, a syncretic Catholic-Candomblé order consisting of (only) elderly women, founded by freedwomen in Bahia in the 1820s, purchased and freed perhaps thousands of people before Brazil’s slaves were emancipated in 1888. Since that time the sisters have served the poor. My book The Cachoeira Tales describes a pilgrimage made to their mother-house several years ago.” —Marilyn Nelson   Marilyn Nelson is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the author of Faster Than Light (Louisiana State University Press, 2012) and How I Discovered Poetry (Dial Press, 2014). She lives with a cat in Connecticut.   Photo credit: Curt Richter Photography Most Recent Book by Nelson   Faster Than Light (Louisiana State University Press, 2012) "Horse Latitudes" by Jo Sarzotti "P.O.P video: Marilyn Nelson" "Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Return to Vienna" by Rita Dove Read This Poem   For National Poetry Month, we’ve teamed up with 826 National to produce Read This Poem, a celebration of poets in cities with 826 chapters. Read this week’s featured poems by poets from Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038