Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems Read Free Page B

Avenue
    on any afternoon,
    the people moving, homeless, through the city,
    praying to find sanctuary before the sky
    and the towers come tumbling down,
    before the earth opens, as it does in
Superman
.
    They know that no one will appear
    to turn back time,
    they know it, just as they know
    that the earth has opened before
    and will open again, just as they know
    that their empire is falling, is doomed,
    nothing can hold it up, nothing.
    We are not talking about belief.
    3
    I wonder how they think
    the niggers made, make it,
    how come the niggers are still here.
    But, then, again, I don’t think they dare
    to think of that: no:
    I’m fairly certain they don’t think of that at all.
    Lord,
    I watch the alabaster lady of the house,
    with Beulah.
    Beulah about sixty, built four-square,
    biceps like Mohammed Ali,
    she at the stove, fixing biscuits,
    scrambling eggs and bacon, fixing coffee,
    pouring juice, and the lady of the house,
    she say, she don’t know
how
    she’d get along without Beulah
    and Beulah just silently grunts,
    I reckon you don’t
,
    and keeps on keeping on
    and the lady of the house say,
    She’s just like one of the family
,
    and Beulah turns, gives me a look,
    sucks her teeth and rolls her eyes
    in the direction of the lady’s back, and
    keeps on keeping on.
    While they are containing
    Russia
    and entering onto the quicksand of
    China
    and patronizing
    Africa,
    and calculating
    the Caribbean plunder, and
    the South China Sea booty,
    the niggers are aware that no one has discussed
    anything at all with the niggers.
    Well. Niggers don’t own nothing,
    got no flag, even our names
    are hand-me-downs
    and you don’t change that
    by calling yourself X:
    sometimes that just makes it worse,
    like obliterating the path that leads back
    to whence you came, and
    to where you can begin.
    And, anyway, none of this changes the reality,
    which is, for example, that I do not want my son
    to die in Guantanamo,
    or anywhere else, for that matter,
    serving the Stars and Stripes.
    (I’ve
seen
some stars.
    I
got
some stripes.)
    Neither (incidentally)
    has anyone discussed the Bomb with the niggers:
    the incoherent feeling is, the less
    the nigger knows about the Bomb, the better:
    the lady of the house
    smiles nervously in your direction
    as though she had just been overheard
    discussing family, or sexual secrets,
    and changes the subject to Education,
    or Full Employment, or the Welfare rolls,
    the smile saying,
Don’t be dismayed
.
    We know how you feel. You can trust us
.
    Yeah. I would like to believe you.
    But we are not talking about belief.
    4
    The sons of greed, the heirs of plunder,
    are approaching the end of their journey:
    it is amazing that they approach without wonder,
    as though they have, themselves, become
    that scorched and blasphemed earth,
    the stricken buffalo, the slaughtered tribes,
    the endless, virgin, bloodsoaked plain,
    the famine, the silence, the children’s eyes,
    murder masquerading as salvation, seducing
    every democratic eye,
    the mouths of truth and anguish choked with cotton,
    rape delirious with the fragrance of magnolia,
    the hacking of the fruit of their loins to pieces,
    hey!
the tar-baby sons and nephews, the high-yaller nieces,
    and Tom’s black prick hacked off
    to rustle in the crinoline,
    to hang, heaviest of heirlooms,
    between the pink and alabaster breasts
    of the Great Man’s Lady,
    or worked into the sash at the waist
    of the high-yaller Creole bitch, or niece,
    a chunk of shining brown-black satin,
    staring, staring, like the single eye of God:
    creation yearns to re-create a time
    when we were able to recognize a crime.
    Alas,
    my stricken kinsmen,
    the party is over:
    there have never been any white people,
    anywhere: the trick was accomplished with mirrors—
    look: where is your image now?
    where your inheritance,
    on what rock stands this pride?
    Oh,
    I counsel you,
    leave History alone.
    She is exhausted,
    sitting,