Lucille Clifton, author of the small collection of poems, “Voices” uses simple and strikingly poignant images throughout her works. The author shows her prowess when she tackles a series of ten poems entitled: “Ten Ox Herding Pictures: A Meditation on Ten Ox Herding Pictures. Each poem is loaded with imagery and description.

In her first poem in this section, Clifton opens with the image of hands. “They are still,” she tells her reader, affectively implanting the image of two still hands. She goes on to paint the picture of them, allowing her reader to feel the readiness of the hands: ready to rise and turn. In the next poem, she shows a change in the hands. She paints a picture of hands, slightly touching. Clifton also mentions a change in the oxen. Her lines, “The silence has released something like a name//they move away I follow//It is the summons from the ox,” (Clifton 44) clearly show that the animals have a deeper relationship with their herder as her first poem stated: “they (the hands) know// they belong to the ox,” (Clifton 43).  In these lines, Clifton has observed the pictures of an ox herder searching for his oxen. She uses the images, sticking to the fine details, touching fingertips, silences, and movement.

Her next poem, “2nd Picture: Seeing the Traces,” works further on the foundation Clifton has laid in the earlier poems. Clifton uses the tracks in the snow, the lack of changes in the scenery, and the solitude to work her themes in. She likens the lack of changes in the scenery to a mirror and personifies the hands, giving them the ability to think. Next, Clifton describes the solitude and the wind that she feels is in the picture as “Voices whispering//in a room where no one sits//except myself,” (Clifton 45).

In her next poem, Clifton uses an extended metaphor. The ox, she presents, is a state of being. The state of being is a state that is and is also “undefined.” She states this when she lists what the silent “it” is not.

            Not the flesh

            Not the Image

            Of the flesh

            Not the bone

            Nor the clicking

            Of the bone

            Not the brain

            Wearing its mask… (Clifton 46).

She brings her point home when she writes, “no thing is defined//we are coming to the ox,”(Clifton 46). The following poem, “4th Picture: Catching the Ox,” is very telling. Clifton blurs the lines between Ox herder and Oxen, making a claim that the animals and the hands are one, or nearly one. Clifton shows the herder whispering to his animals. “Something comes,” she writes, “I am cautioned by the hands.” Clifton shows the deeper connection through both the brevity of the lines and the implied intuition of the herder and the animals. Though the ox herder has whispered, his oxen have heard him and move toward him. Sensing their movement, the ox herder’s hands alert him that they are coming.

In “5th Picture: Herding the Ox,” Clifton reveals herself as the ox herder. Now she shows her hands, “sitting” in their pockets, pulling on personification. She paints a picture of herself standing, speaking to the oxen. Once again, keeping to her theme, Clifton mentions that she is warned by the hands. Oxen, her hands warn her, cannot be tamed.

Her next poem shows her coming home on the ox’s back. Here, Clifton draws on diction to paint the picture. Words like “shamble,” “inflated,” “captured,” and “supports,” show the way they move together and their relationship to each other.  The relationship is that of captor to captive, though the captive supports the captor.

The two meet someone who finally defines the ox; the ox is now the state of being defined. The man claims the ox. Clifton states here that only when one with authority defines a state of being, can they own it. Clifton claims the man, and alludes to marriage.  Clifton then jumps to the future, and paints a picture of her life without the ox. She shows parents, children, and lovers walking with her. She paints a picture of her hands shivering in their pockets, missing the ox.

In “8th Picture: The Ox and The Man Both Gone Out Of Sight,” Clifton strives to define three beings: herself, the man, and the ox. She comes to a paradoxical conclusion: “No thing is ox// All things are ox,” (Clifton 51).  In her next poem, Clifton begins to qualify her statement. She shows that the word ox, does not start with the word, but with the silence before the word, and ends with the ox herder touching fingertips to fingertips, the way her first poem began.

Her second to last poem in the collection: “10th Picture: Entering the city With Bliss-bestowing Hands,” tells of the travelers as they reach the city. Clifton describes herself as she realizes that she has wronged her hands by surrendering the ox, and the meaning of ox to the man. Now when they rise to touch each other, ox cannot come. Her final poem, entitled End of Meditation once again describes the ox: “What is ox//ox is//what,” (Clifton 54) stating what she has been hinting to all along. Ox is a state of being, ox is what is. Ox is now.

 Through her simple images, Clifton brings her meaning home. Clifton uses the images of silence, hands, the man, the ox, and the fingertips to drive home what Ox means. By the end of the poem the reader begins to understand that ox was the silence, the touching of the fingertips, the present and the moment. Ox is not individual, “all things are ox”.