On I am accused of tending to the past

A poem I am accused of tending to the past by Lucille Clifton is simply written, but the
theme behind the plain verses is very clear and strong. The poem starts with:
i am accused of tending to the past
as if i made it,
as if i sculpted it
with my own hands. i did not.

And first of all with this she is throwing away accusations for what she is charged for. And we
understand that she did not sculpt or make the past by herself. In the following two verses this
past was waiting for me/when i came she is making a statement that past was waiting for her,
and that the making of past is legacy from others before her. When we continue reading the poem
we realize that she accepted history and she took her in her life.
a monstrous unnamed baby,
and i with my mother's itch
took it to breast
and named it
History.

The speaker sees it as "a monstrous unnamed baby." the meaning behind this metaphor can be
understood in two different ways: history is something unknown; or by being "unnamed," the
speaker adopts "the baby", and names it History. Being the only capitalized word in the entire
poem, this new name given to the baby marks a separation from the earlier. Clifton is clarifying
that the speaker took it to breast and really learned from it. And finally, Clifton is hiding a
bigger meaning, which history relates to the lives, languages, culture, and the times of humans.
she is more human now, learning languages everyday, remembering faces, names and date .
The final two lines of the text resonate in unity to visualize the future where the narrated would
hopefully have enough power to turn into the narrators: when she is strong enough to travel on
her own, beware, she will.