the twit

    12.01.2008

    belated guestpost 2: frederick douglass

    in the wake of the obama election, and in some ways intertwining with my transposing rhetoric post, my dear heart douglas ray sent two textual moments my way. here's the second:

    "Frederick Douglass"
    When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
    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.
    --Robert Hayden

    2 comments:

    Anonymous said...

    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!

    Anonymous said...

    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