194 Racism and discrimination poems

Black maid, complain not that I fly, When Fate commands antipathy: Prodigious might that union prove, Where Night and Day together move, And the conjunction of our lips Not kisses make, but an eclipse, In which the mixed black and white Portends more terror than delight. Yet if my shadow thou wilt be, Enjoy thy dearest wish. But see Thou take my shadow’s property, That hastes away when I come nigh. Else stay till death hath blinded me, And then I will bequeath myself to thee.

Clean the spittoons, boy. Detroit, Chicago, Atlantic City, Palm Beach. Clean the spittoons. The steam in hotel kitchens, And the smoke in hotel lobbies, And the slime in hotel spittoons: Part of my life. Hey, boy! A nickel, A dime, A dollar, Two dollars a day. Hey, boy! A nickel, A dime, A dollar, Two dollars Buy shoes for the baby. House rent to pay. Gin on Saturday, Church on Sunday. My God! Babies and gin and church And women and Sunday All mixed with dimes and Dollars and clean spittoons And house rent to pay. Hey, boy! A bright bowl of brass is beautiful to the Lord. Bright polished brass like the cymbals Of King David’s dancers, Like the wine cups of Solomon. Hey, boy! A clean spittoon on the altar of the Lord. A clean bright spittoon all newly polished— At least I can offer that. Com’mere, boy!

(T HE M OB SPEAKS :) See! There he stands; not brave, but with an air Of sullen stupor. Mark him well! Is he Not more like brute than man? Look in his eye! No light is there; none, save the glint that shines In the now glaring, and now shifting orbs Of some wild animal caught in the hunter’s trap. How came this beast in human shape and form? Speak man!—We call you man because you wear His shape—How are you thus? Are you not from That docile, child-like, tender-hearted race Which we have known three centuries? Not from That more than faithful race which through three wars Fed our dear wives and nursed our helpless babes Without a single breach of trust? Speak out! (T HE V ICTIM SPEAKS :) I am, and am not. (T HE M OB SPEAKS AGAIN :) Then who, why are you? (T HE V ICTIM SPEAKS AGAIN :) I am a thing not new, I am as old As human nature. I am that which lurks, Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed; The ancient trait which fights incessantly Against restraint, balks at the upward climb; The weight forever seeking to obey The law of downward pull—and I am more: The bitter fruit am I of planted seed; The resultant, the inevitable end Of evil forces and the powers of wrong. Lessons in degradation, taught and learned, The memories of cruel sights and deeds, The pent-up bitterness, the unspent hate Filtered through fifteen generations have Sprung up and found in me sporadic life. In me the muttered curse of dying men, On me the stain of conquered women, and Consuming me the fearful fires of lust, Lit long ago, by other hands than mine. In me the down-crushed spirit, the hurled-back prayers Of wretches now long dead—their dire bequests. In me the echo of the stifled cry Of children for their battered mothers’ breasts. I claim no race, no race claims me; I am No more than human dregs; degenerate; The monstrous offspring of the monster, Sin; I am—just what I am. . . . The race that fed Your wives and nursed your babes would do the same Today. But I— (T HE M OB CONCLUDES :) Enough, the brute must die! Quick! Chain him to that oak! It will resist The fire much longer than this slender pine. Now bring the fuel! Pile it round him! Wait! Pile not so fast or high! or we shall lose The agony and terror in his face. And now the torch! Good fuel that! the flames Already leap head-high. Ha! hear that shriek! And there’s another! wilder than the first. Fetch water! Water! Pour a little on The fire, lest it should burn too fast. Hold so! Now let it slowly blaze again. See there! He squirms! He groans! His eyes bulge wildly out, Searching around in vain appeal for help! Another shriek, the last! Watch how the flesh Grows crisp and hangs till, turned to ash, it sifts Down through the coils of chain that hold erect The ghastly frame against the bark-scorched tree. Stop! to each man no more than one man’s share. You take that bone, and you this tooth; the chain, Let us divide its links; this skull, of course, In fair division, to the leader comes. And now his fiendish crime has been avenged; Let us back to our wives and children—say, What did he mean by those last muttered words, “Brothers in spirit, brothers in deed are we”?

Humanscape 62, 1970, by Melesio Casas Three years before I’d hear the word /beaner/ from the / white boys / who’d spit first in my broccoli, then in my hair, / my mother / dressed me each Wednesday in that / brown / sheath: I was seven. It’d be the only time I’d wear a sash — Miss / America, / she said. Twenty Miss / Americas, we made / kitsch from clothespins, pipe cleaners — our / brown / socks / banded and complicated / with orange tassels just below the / brown / / rosettes / of our knees, little / skulls / knocking together in our elementary / school / cafeteria. How we jumped the day / we heard / voices raising there instead of / at home, / when Tracy’s mom slapped our / troop / leader / and Tracy cried. And Tracy’s / mom was white / and only her / dad was brown / and Tracy was a little / prettier than the rest of us. / At the lunch tables, /white bitch/ stuck to our fingers like glue; /fucking Mexicans/ landed like glitter onto the sashes laid across our / small / hearts. / With Tracy, / we watched / manifest between us / a line, / risen from the tiled floor where / we shared / meals as tears clung to the eye-rims of my seven-year-old / compañeras. / Lorena chewed her nails till blood / bloomed / on her ring finger. Andrea peed quietly / on her brown knee / socks. None of us knew where to hide. This was not / home, / where / we could run / to the / broom / closet or to the / feet / of our big / brothers. /

Carole Robertston, Who loved books, earned straight A's, And took dance lessons every Saturday. Who joined the Girl Scouts and science club And played clarinet in the high school band. A member of Jack and Jill of America. Carole, who thought she might want To teach history someday Or at least make her mark on it.

(May 22, 1965) When we look at ourselves We see ourselves through eyes Which have been schooled To see comely only the opaque, Comely to us skin that is fair, Comely to us eyes that are light, Comely to us hair that is straight, Comely to us lips that are thin, Our gods and goddesses Glow in opalescent whiteness And daily we worship at this shrine. Ugly to us our satin black skin, Ugly to us our fulsome lips, Ugly to us our midnight eyes, Ugly to us our crisping hair Thus we have rejected our image. But this is not as it should be We black people must be born again. Know that the black people like other races Have their own distinct beauty, Know that the Stygian night too is beautiful.

For Arnold Rampersad Shadows bluing the snow, the pines’ and mine, bear the cast of a kestrel’s blue-gray crown I note as I find my way about this town. Blues here more likely the Nordic-eyes kind than the blue-black of some Black folk back home. Here so many lakes reflect the sky’s blue dome; some summer days skimmed-milk blue tints windblown whitecaps. Blue’s an adjective, verb, and noun, and the color of the world when I pine because she’s gone leaving too much wine and time. Blue shadows on the snow, mine and the pines’. For a tall man, blue ox, and now me, home is Bemidji, though the blues here around more the cast of a kestrel’s blue-gray crown than the blue-black of my cousins back home.

The most popular “act” in Penn Station is the three black kids in ratty sneakers & T-shirts playing two violins and a cello—Brahms. White men in business suits have already dug into their pockets as they pass and they toss in a dollar or two without stopping. Brown men in work-soiled khakis stand with their mouths open, arms crossed on their bellies as if they themselves have always wanted to attempt those bars. One white boy, three, sits cross-legged in front of his idols—in ecstasy— their slick, dark faces, their thin, wiry arms, who must begin to look like angels! Why does this trembling pull us? A:Beneath the surface we are one. B:Amazing! I did not think that they could speak this tongue.

O fly away home, fly away. — Robert Hayden There are eyes, glasses even, but still he can’t see what the world sees seeing him. They know an image of him they themselves created. He knows his own: fine-lined from foot to finger, each limb adjusted, because it’s had to, to achieve finally flight — though what’s believed in him is a flightlessness, a sinking-down, as any swamp-mess of water I’m always thinking of might draw down again the washed-up body of a boy, as any mouth I’ve yearned for would take down, wrestler-style, the boy’s tongue with its own    ... What an eye can’t imagine it can’t find: not in blood, swollen in the stiff knees of a cypress, not definitely in some dreaming man’s dream — Let’s have his nature speak. What will the incredible night of  him say here, to his thousand moons, now that he can rise up to any tree, rope or none, but not fear it?

Prairie winds blaze through her tumbled belly, and Emmett’s red yesterdays refuse to rename her any kind of mother. A pudge-cheeked otherwise, sugar whistler, her boy is (through the fierce clenching mouth of her memory) a grays-and-shadows child.Listen. Once she was pretty. Windy hues goldened her skin. She was pert, brown-faced, in every wide way the opposite of the raw, screeching thing chaos has crafted. Now, threaded awkwardly, she tires of the sorries, the Lawd have mercies. Grief’s damnable tint is everywhere, darkening days she is no longer aware of. She is gospel revolving, repeatedly emptied of light, pulled and caressed, cooed upon by strangers, offered pork and taffy. Boys in the street stare at her, then avert their eyes, as if she killed them all, shipped every one into the grips of Delta. She sits, her chair carefully balanced on hell’s edge, and pays for sanity in kisses upon the conjured forehead of her son. Beginning with A, she recites (angry, away, awful) the alphabet of a world gone red. Coffee scorches her throat as church ladies drift about her room, black garb sweating their hips, filling cups with tap water, drinking, drinking in glimpses of her steep undoing. The absence of a black roomful of boy is measured, again, again. In the clutches of coffee, red-eyed, Mamie knows their well-meaning murmur. One says She a mama, still. Once you have a chile, you always a mama.