Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems (3 page)

feeding on itself, ending

(when it ends) in madness:

the action is blindness and pain,

pain bringing a torpor so deep

that every act is willed,

is desperately forced,

is willed to be a blow:

the hand becomes a fist,

the prick becomes a club,

the womb a dangerous swamp,

the hope, and fear, of love

is acid in the marrow of the bone.

No, their fire is not quenched,

nor can be: the oil feeding the flames

being the unadmitted terror of the wrath of God.

Yes. But let us put it in another,

less theological way:

though theology has absolutely nothing to do

with what I am trying to say.

But the moment God is mentioned

theology is summoned

to buttress or demolish belief:

an exercise which renders belief irrelevant

and adds to the despair of Fifth 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, staring into her dressing-room mirror,

and wondering what rabbit, now,

to pull out of what hat,

and seriously considering retirement,

even though she knows her public

dare not let her go.

She must change.

Yes. History must change.

A slow, syncopated

relentless music begins

suggesting her re-entry,

transformed, virginal as she was,

in the Beginning, untouched,

as the Word was spoken,

before the rape which debased her

to be the whore of multitudes, or,

as one might say, before she became the Star,

whose name, above our title,

carries the Show, making History the patsy,

responsible for every flubbed line,

every missed cue, responsible for the life

and death, of all bright illusions

and dark delusions,

Lord, History is weary

of her unspeakable liaison with Time,

for Time and History

have never seen eye to eye:

Time laughs at History

and time and time and time again

Time traps History in a lie.

But we always, somehow, managed

to roar History back onstage

to take another bow,

to justify, to sanctify

the journey until now.

Time warned us to ask for our money back,

and disagreed with History

as concerns colours white and black.

Not only do we come from further back,

but the light of the Sun

marries all colours as one.

Kinsmen,

I have seen you betray your Saviour

(it is
you
who call Him Saviour)

so many times, and

I have spoken to Him about you,

behind your back.

Quite a lot has been going on

behind your back, and,

if your phone has not yet been disconnected,

it will soon begin to ring:

informing you, for example, that a whole generation,

in Africa, is about to die,

and a new generation is about to rise,

and will not need your bribes,

or your persuasions, any more:

nor your morality. Nor the plundered gold—

Ah! Kinsmen, if I could make you see

the crime is not what you have done to me!

It is you who are blind,

you, bowed down with chains,

you, whose children mock you, and seek another

master,

you, who cannot look man or woman or child in the

eye,

whose sleep is blank with terror,

for whom love died long ago,

somewhere between the airport and the safe-deposit

box,

the buying and selling of rising or falling stocks,

you, who miss Zanzibar and Madagascar and Kilimanjaro

and lions and tigers and elephants and zebras

and flying fish and crocodiles and alligators and

leopards

and crashing waterfalls and endless rivers,

flowers fresher than Eden, silence sweeter than the

grace of God,

passion at every turning, throbbing in the bush,

thicker, oh, than honey in the hive,

dripping

dripping

opening, welcoming, aching from toe to bottom

to spine,

sweet heaven on the line

to last forever, yes,

but, now,

rejoicing ends, man, a price remains to pay,

your innocence costs too much

and we can't carry you on our books

or our backs, any longer: baby,

find another Eden, another apple tree,

somewhere, if you can,

and find some other natives, somewhere else,

to listen to you bellow

till you come, just like a man,

but we don't need you,

are sick of being a fantasy to feed you,

and of being the principal accomplice to your

crime:

for, it is
your
crime, now, the cross to which you

cling,

your Alpha and Omega for everything.

Well (others have told you)

your clown's grown weary, the puppet master

is bored speechless with this monotonous disaster,

and is long gone, does not belong to you,

any more than my woman, or my child,

ever belonged to you.

During this long travail

our ancestors spoke to us, and we listened,

and we tried to make you hear life in our song

but now it matters not at all to me

whether you know what I am talking about—or not:

I know why we are not blinded

by your brightness, are able to see you,

who cannot see us. I know

why we are still here.

Godspeed.

The niggers are calculating,

from day to day, life everlasting,

and wish you well:

but decline to imitate the Son of the Morning,

and rule in Hell.

1

I believe, my brother,

that some are haunted by a song,

all day, and all the midnight long:

I'm going to tell

God

how you treated

Me:

one of these days
.

Now, if that song tormented me,

I could have no choice but be

whiter than a bleaching bone

of all the ways there are,

this must be the most dreadful

way to be alone.

White rejects light

while blackness drinks it in

becoming many colours

and stone holds heat

while grass smothers

and flowers die

and the sleeping snake

is hacked to pieces

while digesting his

(so to speak)

three-martini lunch.

Dread stalks our streets,

and our faces.

Many races

gather, again,

to despise and disperse

and destroy us:

nor can they any longer pretend

to be looking for a friend.

That dream was sold

when we were,

on the auction-block

of Manifest Destiny.

Time is not money.

Time

      
is

        
time
.

And the time has come, again,

to outwit and outlast

survive and surmount

the authors of the blasphemy

of our chains.

At least, we know

a man, when we see one,

a shackle, when we wear one,

or a chain, when we bear one,

a noose from a halter,

or a pit from an altar.

We, who have been blinded,

are not blind

and sense when not to

trust the mind.

Time is not money.

Time is time.

You made the money.

We made the rhyme.

Our children are.

Our children are.

Our children are:

which means that we must be

the pillar of cloud by day

and of fire by night:

the guiding star.

2

My beloved brother,

I know your walk

and love to hear you

talk that talk

while your furrowed brow

grows young with wonder,

like a small boy, staring at the thunder.

I see you, somehow,

about the age of ten,

determined to enter the world of men,

yet, not too far from your mother's lap,

wearing your stunning

baseball cap.

Perhaps, then, around eleven,

wondering what to take as given,

and, not much later, going through

the agony bequeathed to you.

Then, spun around, then going under,

the small boy staring at the thunder.

Then, take it all

and use it well

this manhood, calculating

through this hell.

3

Who says better? Who knows more

than those who enter at that door

called back

for Black,

by Christians, who

raped your mother

and, then, lynched you,

seed from their loins,

flesh of their flesh,

bone of their bone: