"Frederick Douglass"
When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful--Robert Hayden
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues' rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.
2 comments:
We are all children of that crossing
the great ocean
bore us away
from home, many homes
to a promised land
and we came to
know it
as America
But lately, the
promises
are all broken up
like windows in
abandoned tenements
and when we
climb through
the opening
to explore we
get cut
on the glass
the kids in
cities now I hear
carry a gun
just to get to school
250000 guns
everyday like
lunch boxes but
instead of food
blood
I didn't carry
a gun with my lunch
and I
didn't walk through
dangerous streets
to learn
but I have seen
chaos, I have been
afraid and I
was surprised to find
the promised land
so full of hate
and fear
there is land here to grow
and schools to teach
not so in some less
fortunate places
there is hope here
more even than Europe
we were hopeful
getting on those boats
some by choice, some
not, but we all
looked for land
during that great
ocean crossing
and here
its here, we're here
Please see that
you have arrived
from great struggle
to great ease, joyful
geese wandering to
a tree filled mountain
we should drink to
our good fortune
gather our young to
praise our promised land
but not the blood of
others, drink not blood
but wine or some other
fruit of this fruited plain
eat from waving fields
not flesh and bones of
your workers or your enemy
we are all children of
that crossing now,
in a promised land.
SKSullivan 1 Jan 94 (Lily was here, but I didn't know it yet!) Enjoy!
I thought you'd like this quote from William Faulkner, 1931 An Odor of Verbena
"A dream is not a very safe thing to be near.. it's like a loaded pistol with a hair trigger: if it stays alive long enough, somebody is going to get hurt."
Aunt Susan
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