"Each week a different woman
regular as his one quick glass
each evening
pulls up the grass his stillness grows
calling it weed."
After his wife's death, Lorde's father dated a lot of women. None stayed long though because they didn't appreciate the reservation he had cultivated in his soul. In his wife's absence, he had learned to teach himself to be quiet and still, but these women wanted him involved and active. They struggled to become intimate with him because he maintained such a tight seal on his feelings.
". . . flameproofed free-paper shredded
in the teeth of a pillagin dog
never to dream of spiders
and when they turned the hoses upon me
a burst of light."
A part of a race protest, a young protester is struck down among the crowd. As police release dogs and turn fire hoses onto the crowd, the protester realizes that he or she is finally immortal. No spiders will form cobwebs upon the memory of this person because they're dying for a cause that can't be destroyed.
"There are many kinds of open.
How a diamond comes into a knot of flame
How a sound comes into a word, coloured
By who pays what for speaking."
In this excerpt, Lorde is addressing discrimination in speech. She's describing how tolerance applies to a lot more than just proclaiming itself. Openness is seen in various forms: how the natural world refines itself, what is spoken, and what is not spoken. For some, the true measure of prejudice is who's paying more to say the same things as others who say them for free.
"Do not remember me
as disaster
nor as the keeper of secrets
I am a fellow rider in the cattle cars
watching
you move slowly out of my bed
saying we cannot waste time
only ourself."
In "Movement Song," Lorde addresses the painful details of moving. The narrator wants to be remembered a certain way but is uncertain whether they can lay that claim. Despite wrongs committed, the narrator wants to be remembered for the sweeter moments. They want to be forever characterized for the final time they rolled out of bed in a hurry and kissed goodbye.
