Nikki Giovanni

walking down park amsterdam or columbus do you ever stop to think what it looked like before it was an avenue did you ever stop to think what you walked before you rode subways to the stock exchange (we can’t be on the stock exchange we are the stock exchanged) did you ever maybe wonder what grass was like before they rolled it into a ball and called it central park where syphilitic dogs and their two-legged tubercular masters fertilize the corners and side-walks ever want to know what would happen if your life could be fertilized by a love thought from a loved one who loves you ever look south on a clear day and not see time’s squares but see tall Birch trees with sycamores touching hands and see gazelles running playfully after the lions ever hear the antelope bark from the third floor apartment ever, did you ever, sit down and wonder about what freedom’s freedom would bring it’s so easy to be free you start by loving yourself then those who look like you all else will come naturally ever wonder why so much asphalt was laid in so little space probably so we would forget the Iroquois, Algonquin and Mohicans who could caress the earth ever think what Harlem would be like if our herbs and roots and elephant ears grew sending a cacophony of sound to us the parrot parroting black is beautiful black is beautiful owls sending out whooooo’s making love ... and me and you just sitting in the sun trying to find a way to get a banana tree from one of the monkeys koala bears in the trees laughing at our listlessness ever think its possible for us to be happy

they clapped when we landed thinking africa was just an extension of the black world they smiled as we taxied home to be met black to black face not understanding africans lack color prejudice they rushed to declare cigarettes, money, allegiance to the mother land not knowing despite having read fanon and davenport hearing all of j.h. clarke’s lectures, supporting nkrumah in ghana and nigeria in the war that there was once a tribe called afro-americans that populated the whole of africa they stopped running when they learned the packages on the women’s heads were heavy and that babies didn’t cry and disease is uncomfortable and that villages are fun only because you knew the feel of good leather on good pavement they cried when they saw mercedes benz were as common in lagos as volkswagens are in berlin they shook their heads when they understood there was no difference between the french and the english and the americans and the afro-americans or the tribe next door or the country across the border they were exasperated when they heard sly and the family stone in francophone africa and they finally smiled when little boys who spoke no western tongue said “james brown” with reverence they brought out their cameras and bought out africa’s drums when they finally realized that they are strangers all over and love is only and always about the lover not the beloved they marveled at the beauty of the people and the richness of the land knowing they could never possess either they clapped when they took off for home despite the dead dream they saw a free future

It is appropriate that I sing The song of the feet The weight of the body And what the body chooses to bear Fall on me I trampled the American wilderness Forged frontier trails Outran the mob in Tulsa Got caught in Philadelphia And am still unreparated I soldiered on in Korea Jungled through Vietman sweated out Desert Storm Caved my way through Afghanistan Tunneled the World Trade Center And on the worst day of my life Walked behind JFK Shouldered MLK Stood embracing Sister Betty I wiggle my toes In the sands of time Trusting the touch that controls my motion Basking in the warmth of the embrace Day’s end offers with warm salty water It is appropriate I sing The praise of the feet I am a Black woman

This is for the Pullman Porters who organized when people said they couldn’t. And carried the Pittsburgh Courier and the ChicagoDefender to the Black Americans in the South so they would know they were not alone. This is for the Pullman Porters who helped Thurgood Marshall go south and come back north to fight the fight that resulted in Brown v. Board of Education because even though Kansas is west and even though Topeka is the birth- place of Gwendolyn Brooks, who wrote the powerful “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock,” it was the Pullman Porters who whispered to the traveling men both the Blues Men and the “Race” Men so that they both would know what was going on. This is for the Pullman Porters who smiled as if they were happy and laughed like they were tickled when some folks were around and who silently rejoiced in 1954 when the Supreme Court announced its 9—0 decision that “sepa- rate is inherently unequal.” This is for the Pullman Porters who smiled and welcomed a fourteen-year-old boy onto their train in 1955. They noticed his slight limp that he tried to disguise with a doo-wop walk; they noticed his stutter and probably understood why his mother wanted him out of Chicago during the summer when school was out. Fourteen-year-old Black boys with limps and stutters are apt to try to prove themselves in dangerous ways when mothers aren’t around to look after them. So this is for the Pullman Porters who looked over that fourteen-year-old while the train rolled the reverse of the Blues Highway from Chicago to St. Louis to Memphis to Mississippi. This is for the men who kept him safe; and if Emmett Till had been able to stay on a train all summer he would have maybe grown a bit of a paunch, certainly lost his hair, probably have worn bifocals and bounced his grand- children on his knee telling them about his summer riding the rails. But he had to get off the train. And ended up in Money, Mississippi. And was horribly, brutally, inexcusably, and unac- ceptably murdered. This is for the Pullman Porters who, when the sheriff was trying to get the body secretly buried, got Emmett’s body on the northbound train, got his body home to Chicago, where his mother said: I want the world to see what they did to my boy. And this is for all the mothers who cried. And this is for all the people who said Never Again. And this is about Rosa Parks whose feet were not so tired, it had been, after all, an ordi- nary day, until the bus driver gave her the opportunity to make history. This is about Mrs. Rosa Parks from Tuskegee, Alabama, who was also the field secretary of the NAACP. This is about the moment Rosa Parks shouldered her cross, put her worldly goods aside, was willing to sacrifice her life, so that that young man in Money, Mississippi, who had been so well protected by the Pullman Porters, would not have died in vain. When Mrs. Parks said “NO” a passionate movement was begun. No longer would there be a reliance on the law; there was a higher law. When Mrs. Parks brought that light of hers to expose the evil of the system, the sun came and rested on her shoulders bringing the heat and the light of truth. Others would follow Mrs. Parks. Four young men in Greensboro, North Carolina, would also say No. Great voices would be raised singing the praises of God and exhorting us “to forgive those who trespass against us.” But it was the Pullman Porters who safely got Emmett to his granduncle and it was Mrs. Rosa Parks who could not stand that death. And in not being able to stand it. She sat back down.

Trees are never felled . . . in summer . . . Not when the fruit . . . is yet to be borne . . . Never before the promise . . . is fulfilled . . . Not when their cooling shade . . . has yet to comfort . . . Yet there are those . . . unheeding of nature . . . indifferent to ecology . . . ignorant of need . . . who . . . with ax and sharpened saw . . . would . . . in boots . . . step forth damaging . . . Not the tree . . . for it falls . . . But those who would . . . in summer’s heat . . . or winter’s cold . . . contemplate . . . the beauty . . .

so he said: you ain’t got no talent if you didn’t have a face you wouldn’t be nobody and she said: god created heaven and earth and all that’s Black within them so he said: you ain’t really no hot shit they tell me plenty sisters take care better business than you and she said: on the third day he made chitterlings and all good things to eat and said: “that’s good” so he said: if the white folks hadn’t been under yo skirt and been giving you the big play you’d a had to come on uptown like everybody else and she replied: then he took a big Black greasy rib from adam and said we will call this woeman and her name will be sapphire and she will divide into four parts that simone may sing a song and he said: you pretty full of yourself ain’t chu so she replied: show me someone not full of herself and i’ll show you a hungry person

(For Gwendolyn Brooks, 1917—2001) maybe there is something about the seventh of June: Gwen, Prince and me . . . or maybe people just have to be born at some time . . . and there are only three hundred sixty-five days or three sixty-six every four years or so . . . meaning that some things happen at the same time in the same rising sign . . . and the same houses in Gemini . . . but some of us might also consider the possibility of reincarnating revolving restructuring that spirit . . . reshaping that spirit . . . releasing that spirit . . . tucking the use- less inside and when the useless pushes out again we restructure again and poetry and song and praisesong go on  . . . because it is the right thing to do we always will cry when a great heart . . . a good soul . . . one of the premier poets of her age restructures . . . reincarnates  . . . revolves into a resolve that we now carry in our hearts . . . as all great women and men are alive . . . not by biology but remem- brance . . . and that’s all right . . . as the old folk say . . . because as long as they stay on the lips . . . they nestle in our hearts and those souls which are planted . . . continue growing . . . until generations not knowing their touch . . . their voice . . . or even the fact that some Chicago poets are terrible cooks . . . but always fun to eat with . . . will tell tales of having met someone who knew someone who once watched a basketball game . . . in which some Chicago poet cheered for Seattle at the request of some Virginia poet who wanted more games . . . while Mr. Blakely was amazed that a Chicago poet was even watching a game . . . and didn’t we miss him as he slipped away watching baseball . . . and what a way to go . . . though we then did sort of know . . . that once gone . . . he would call the woman he loved and so we come to no more phone calls at six a.m. to chat ... and no more Benihana when we are all in New York . . . and no more gossiping and questioning and trying to make sense of a senseless world . . . no more face-to-face . . . only the poetry which is a great monument from this Topeka daughter to the world . . . and yet . . . there can be no complaints in this passing . . . no sorrow songs . . . no if onlys . . . it is all here: the work the love: the woman: who gave and gave and gave . . . no complaints of too long or too hard . . . no injustice of accident or misunderstanding of disease . . . just one great woman moving to the next phase . . . and us on the ground . . . giving Alleluias

childhood remembrances are always a drag if you’re Black you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet and if you become famous or something they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother all to yourself and how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in and somehow when you talk about home it never gets across how much you understood their feelings as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale and even though you remember your biographers never understand your father’s pain as he sells his stock and another dream goes And though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that concerns you and though they fought a lot it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference but only that everybody is together and you and your sister have happy birthdays and very good Christmases and I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me because they never understand Black love is Black wealth and they’ll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while I was quite happy

the last time i was home to see my mother we kissed exchanged pleasantries and unpleasantries pulled a warm comforting silence around us and read separate books i remember the first time i consciously saw her we were living in a three room apartment on burns avenue mommy always sat in the dark i don’t know how i knew that but she did that night i stumbled into the kitchen maybe because i’ve always been a night person or perhaps because i had wet the bed she was sitting on a chair the room was bathed in moonlight diffused through those thousands of panes landlords who rented to people with children were prone to put in windows she may have been smoking but maybe not her hair was three-quarters her height which made me a strong believer in the samson myth and very black i’m sure i just hung there by the door i remember thinking: what a beautiful lady she was very deliberately waiting perhaps for my father to come home from his night job or maybe for a dream that had promised to come by “come here” she said “i’ll teach you a poem:i see the moon the moon sees me god bless the moon and god bless me

her grandmother called her from the playground “yes, ma’am” “i want chu to learn how to make rolls” said the old woman proudly but the little girl didn’t want to learn how because she knew even if she couldn’t say it that that would mean when the old one died she would be less dependent on her spirit so she said “i don’t want to know how to make no rolls” with her lips poked out and the old woman wiped her hands on her apron saying “lord these children” and neither of them ever said what they meant and i guess nobody ever does