Answer: " I stand up // through your destruction// I stand up.
Explanation: The poet, Lucile Clifton (1936-2010), wrote poems against adversity that affected mainly African- American people. She was an African- American herself. In this poem , she expressed the fact that she had been able to succeed in life because some other people, like the ones described in the poem, could not. In fact, these people suffered the consequences of the racist struggles , yet the African- American community went on fighting and the poet , probably younger that the woman and the man mentioned in the poem, had a better life.