My hair is grey, but not with years, Nor grew it white In a single night, As men's have grown from sudden fears: My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil, But rusted with a vile repose, For they have been a dungeon's spoil, And mine has been the fate of those
A lot of water has passed under the bridge since 1963. Then, my concernwas particularly for my own people and this version was written especially for them. I am happy that it has done and is doing its job. However, I want it to be known, that I am not a proponent of the concept of cultural nationalism. I dearly love and am proud of my good, serious, sincere black people, yet at the same time, my concern is with all people of goodwill no matter the color. I make no mystique of blackness. I am a humanist. Indeed, I am auniversalist. This truth, I know. The liberation of black people in the United States is tightly linked with the liberation of black people in the far flungdiaspora. Further, and more important, the liberation of black and oppressed people all over the world, is linked with the struggles of the workers of the world of every nationality and color against the common oppressors, overlords, and exploiters of their labor.
Thus it was only natural that I should write "What Shall We Tell Our Children?" in 1973. I have tried to tell them the facts of life and the truth as I see it:
I hope I have succeeded.
What shall we tell our children who are black?
What shall we tell our children who are white?
What shall we tell children of every race and hue?
For all children are the children of all of us
Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur.—Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
It is patent to the eye that cannot face the sun The smug philosophers lie who say the world is one; World is other and other, world is here and there, Parmenides would smother life for lack of air Precluding birth and death; his crystal never breaks— No movement and no breath, no progress nor mistakes, Nothing begins or ends, no one loves or fights, All your foes are friends and all your days are nights
NO more of talk where God or Angel Guest With Man, as with his Friend, familiar us'd To sit indulgent, and with him partake Rural repast, permitting him the while Venial discourse unblam'd: I now must change Those Notes to Tragic; foul distrust, and breach Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt, And disobedience: On the part of Heav'n
I always wonder what they think the niggers are doing while they, the pink and alabaster pragmatists, are containing Russia and defining and re-defining and re-aligning China,
The nurse-life wheat within his green husk growing, Flatters our hope, and tickles our desire, Nature’s true riches in sweet beauties showing, Which sets all hearts, with labor’s love, on fire.
No less fair is the wheat when golden ear Shows unto hope the joys of near enjoying; Fair and sweet is the bud, more sweet and fair the rose, which proves that time is not destroying.
Caelica, your youth, the morning of delight, Enamel’d o’er with beauties white and red, All sense and thoughts did to belief invite, That love and glory there are brought to bed; And your ripe year’s love-noon; he goes no higher,
For my friend, Ruth, who urges me to make an appointment for the Sacrament of Confession Concerning your letter in which you ask me to call a priest and in which you ask
honey people murder mercy U.S.A. the milkland turn to monsters teach to kill to violate pull down destroy the weakly freedom growing fruit from being born
She said: “I’m god and all of this and that world and love garbage and slaughter all the time and spring once a year. Once a year I like to love. You can adjust to the discipline or not, and your sacrificial act called ‘Fruitfulness in Decay’
The mind is a city like London, Smoky and populous: it is a capital Like Rome, ruined and eternal, Marked by the monuments which no one Now remembers. For the mind, like Rome, contains Catacombs, aqueducts, amphitheatres, palaces, Churches and equestrian statues, fallen, broken or soiled.
At last we parley: we so strangely dumb In such a close communion! It befell About the sounding of the Matin-bell, And lo! her place was vacant, and the hum Of loneliness was round me. Then I rose, And my disordered brain did guide my foot To that old wood where our first love-salute Was interchanged: the source of many throes!
The American public is patient, The American public is slow, The American public will stand as much As any public I know. We submit to be killed by our railroads, We submit to be fooled by our press, We can stand as much government scandal As any folks going, I guess,
I Beyond the hollow sunset, ere a star Take heart in heaven from eastward, while the west, Fulfilled of watery resonance and rest, Is as a port with clouds for harbour bar To fold the fleet in of the winds from far That stir no plume now of the bland sea's breast:
II Above the soft sweep of the breathless bay Southwestward, far past flight of night and day, Lower than the sunken sunset sinks, and higher Than dawn can freak the front of heaven with fire, My thought with eyes and wings made wide makes way To find the place of souls that I desire.
It’s a spring morning; sun pours in the window As I sit here drinking coffee, reading Augustine. And finding him, as always, newly minted From when I first encountered him in school. Today I’m overcome with astonishment At the way we girls denied all that was mean In those revered philosophers we studied; Who found us loathsome, loathsomely seductive;
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