Identify a message in at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989 by Lucille Clifton. Explain your answer with examples from...

was an
African American poet. She wrote this poem after visiting Walnut Grove Plantation in South
Carolina in 1989. While visiting the plantation, she was shown around by a tour guide who didn't
mention at all the plantation's ties with slavery.

The message of this poem
is that we shouldn't try to erase or edit aspects of history that we think are unpleasant or
unpalatable. In fact, Clifton might argue that when aspects of history strike us as unpleasant
or unpalatable, there is even more reason not to erase or edit them.

In the
first stanza, Clifton writes that the silence of the plantation's dead is "drumming / in my
bones." The word "drumming" suggests that the silence is so conspicuous as to be
perhaps louder, figuratively at least, than what the tour guide is actually saying. The word
"drumming" here is also in the continuous tense, as indicated by the "-ing"
suffix, which suggests that the silence is also ongoing, insistent, and maybe even relentless.
It's as if the slaves are calling from behind the silence, demanding to be heard.

In the second stanza, the tour guide's omission seems even more conspicuous and odd
because so much of the plantation is a physical testament to the lives of the slaves who once
worked there. The tools "shine with [the] fingerprints" of the slaves, meaning that
they have been so often used by slaves that they have become polished and smooth. Also, the
buildings themselves are a testament to the slaves who built them, even though those slaves
aren't mentioned by the tour guide. As Clifton says, "somebody did this
work."

In the third stanza, Clifton calls upon the slaves to "tell
me your names" so that she can "testify" and break the silence to make people
remember that the slaves were here, on the plantation. And in the final stanza, Clifton repeats
"here lies," alluding to the common inscription on a gravestone before the name of the
deceased. The fact that the names are missing here suggests that the names have been, or are
being, forgotten. The word "lies" also suggests that the silence is equivalent to
being untruthful. By not remembering the slaves who worked on this plantation, the tour guide is
as good as lying about an important, if unpleasant, part of our historya history which should be
voiced more loudly.

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