Gwendolyn Brooks

Maud went to college. Sadie stayed at home. Sadie scraped life With a fine-tooth comb. She didn’t leave a tangle in. Her comb found every strand. Sadie was one of the livingest chits In all the land. Sadie bore two babies Under her maiden name. Maud and Ma and Papa Nearly died of shame. When Sadie said her last so-long Her girls struck out from home. (Sadie had left as heritage Her fine-tooth comb.) Maud, who went to college, Is a thin brown mouse. She is living all alone In this old house.

Carried her unprotesting out the door. Kicked back the casket-stand. But it can't hold her, That stuff and satin aiming to enfold her, The lid's contrition nor the bolts before. Oh oh. Too much. Too much. Even now, surmise, She rises in the sunshine. There she goes, Back to the bars she knew and the repose In love-rooms and the things in people's eyes. Too vital and too squeaking. Must emerge. Even now she does the snake-hips with a hiss, Slops the bad wine across her shantung, talks Of pregnancy, guitars and bridgework, walks In parks or alleys, comes haply on the verge Of happiness, haply hysterics. Is.

A riot is the language of the unheard. —martin luther king John Cabot, out of Wilma, once a Wycliffe, all whitebluerose below his golden hair, wrapped richly in right linen and right wool, almost forgot his Jaguar and Lake Bluff; almost forgot Grandtully (which is The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Scotch); almost forgot the sculpture at the Richard Gray and Distelheim; the kidney pie at Maxim’s, the Grenadine de Boeuf at Maison Henri. Because the Negroes were coming down the street. Because the Poor were sweaty and unpretty (not like Two Dainty Negroes in Winnetka) and they were coming toward him in rough ranks. In seas. In windsweep. They were black and loud. And not detainable. And not discreet. Gross. Gross. “Que tu es grossier!” John Cabot itched instantly beneath the nourished white that told his story of glory to the World. “Don’t let It touch me! the blackness! Lord!” he whispered to any handy angel in the sky. But, in a thrilling announcement, on It drove and breathed on him: and touched him. In that breath the fume of pig foot, chitterling and cheap chili, malign, mocked John. And, in terrific touch, old averted doubt jerked forward decently, cried, “Cabot! John! You are a desperate man, and the desperate die expensively today.” John Cabot went down in the smoke and fire and broken glass and blood, and he cried “Lord! Forgive these nigguhs that know not what they do.”

A Poem in Three Parts A riot is the language of the unheard.

Blackness is a title, is a preoccupation, is a commitment Blacks are to comprehend— and in which you are to perceive your Glory. The conscious shout of all that is white is “It’s Great to be white.” The conscious shout of the slack in Black is "It's Great to be white." Thus all that is white has white strength and yours. The word Black has geographic power, pulls everybody in: Blacks here— Blacks there— Blacks wherever they may be. And remember, you Blacks, what they told you— remember your Education: “one Drop—one Drop maketh a brand new Black.” Oh mighty Drop. ______And because they have given us kindly so many more of our people Blackness stretches over the land. Blackness— the Black of it, the rust-red of it, the milk and cream of it, the tan and yellow-tan of it, the deep-brown middle-brown high-brown of it, the “olive” and ochre of it— Blackness marches on. The huge, the pungent object of our prime out-ride is to Comprehend, to salute and to Love the fact that we are Black, which is our “ultimate Reality,” which is the lone ground from which our meaningful metamorphosis, from which our prosperous staccato, group or individual, can rise. Self-shriveled Blacks. Begin with gaunt and marvelous concession: YOU are our costume and our fundamental bone. All of you— you COLORED ones, you NEGRO ones, those of you who proudly cry “I’m half INDian”— those of you who proudly screech “I’VE got the blood of George WASHington in MY veins” ALL of you— you proper Blacks, you half-Blacks, you wish-I-weren’t Blacks, Niggeroes and Niggerenes. You.

For Reverend Theodore Richardson If Mary came would Mary Forgive, as Mothers may, And sad and second Saviour Furnish us today? She would not shake her head and leave This military air, But ratify a modern hay, And put her Baby there. Mary would not punish men— If Mary came again.

There is a little lightning in his eyes. Iron at the mouth. His brows ride neither too far up nor down. He is splendid. With a place to stand. Some glowing in the common blood. Some specialness within.

He was born in Alabama. He was bred in Illinois. He was nothing but a Plain black boy. Swing low swing low sweet sweet chariot. Nothing but a plain black boy. Drive him past the Pool Hall. Drive him past the Show. Blind within his casket, But maybe he will know. Down through Forty-seventh Street: Underneath the L, And Northwest Corner, Prairie, That he loved so well. Don’t forget the Dance Halls— Warwick and Savoy, Where he picked his women, where He drank his liquid joy. Born in Alabama. Bred in Illinois. He was nothing but a Plain black boy. Swing low swing low sweet sweet chariot. Nothing but a plain black boy.

I hold my honey and I store my bread In little jars and cabinets of my will. I label clearly, and each latch and lid I bid, Be firm till I return from hell. I am very hungry. I am incomplete. And none can tell when I may dine again. No man can give me any word but Wait, The puny light. I keep eyes pointed in; Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt Drag out to their last dregs and I resume On such legs as are left me, in such heart As I can manage, remember to go home, My taste will not have turned insensitive To honey and bread old purity could love.

Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get, The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair, The singers and workers that never handled the air. You will never neglect or beat Them, or silence or buy with a sweet. You will never wind up the sucking-thumb Or scuttle off ghosts that come. You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh, Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye. I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children. I have contracted. I have eased My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck. I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized Your luck And your lives from your unfinished reach, If I stole your births and your names, Your straight baby tears and your games, Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths, If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths, Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate. Though why should I whine, Whine that the crime was other than mine?— Since anyhow you are dead. Or rather, or instead, You were never made. But that too, I am afraid, Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said? You were born, you had body, you died. It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried. Believe me, I loved you all. Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you All.