For Robert Hayden

Did your father come home after fighting through the week at work? Did the sweat change to salt in his ears? Was that bitter white grain the only music he’d hear? Is this why you were quiet when other poets sang of the black man’s beauty? Is this why you choked on the tonsil of Negro Duty? Were there as many offices for pain as love? Should a black man never be shy? Was your father a mountain twenty shovels couldn’t bury? Was he a train leaving a lone column of smoke? Was he a black magnolia singing at your feet? Was he a blackjack smashed against your throat?