Sunday, May 20, 2007

Blood On A Black Body


How many times,

has this ancient song been sung
over the sons and daughters of Africa?


How many days, have ached

with the wailing and mourning?

How many jewels have been silenced and forgotten—
covered 
with lies,
with time,
and bitter earth?

We wake.

But we cannot awake from our dreaming.

We rise.
Just to bend to the plow again.

We rage!
But our raging becomes our undoing.

We flee!
Into an acceptance
of our unequal station...

Blood on a black body! And no one to take the blame.
Blood on a black body! And the people are strangely silent.

Blood on a black body! Tells us what we are worth to the world:
And that no one loves our children
until they bleed.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"We rise, just to bend to the plow again. We rage! But our raging . . ."

Yes, as one who's worked hard for the Man my whole life I relate to these lines, drink them in bitterly, accept them, as the way it is in a society where money and profit is the popular God always. The American Dream has always bowed down to the popular God. The founding fathers were aristocratic landowners. And so it goes . . . Good poem.