The Panther and the Lash (4 page)

Neighborhood’s clean,

But the house is old,

Prices are doubled

When I get sold:

Still I buy.

      
White folks fly—

      
Soon as you spy

      
My wife

      
And I!

Next thing you know,

Our neighbors all colored are.

The candy store’s

Turned into a bar:

White folks have left

The whole neighborhood

To my black self.

      
White folks, flee!

      
Still—there is me!

      
White folks, fly!

      
Here am I!

In the Quarter of the Negroes

Where the doors are doors of paper

Dust of dingy atoms

Blows a scratchy sound.

Amorphous jack-o’-lanterns caper

and the wind won’t wait for midnight

For fun to blow doors down.

By the river and the railroad

With fluid far-off going

Boundaries bind unbinding

A whirl of whistles blowing.

No trains or steamboats going—

Yet Leontyne’s unpacking.

In the Quarter of the Negroes

Where the doorknob lets in Lieder

More than German ever bore,

Her yesterday past grandpa—

Not of her own doing—

In a pot of collard greens

Is gently stewing.

Pushcarts fold and unfold

In a supermarket sea.

And we better find out, mama,

Where is the colored laundromat

Since we moved up to Mount Vernon.

In the pot behind the paper doors

On the old iron stove what’s cooking?

What’s smelling, Leontyne?

Lieder, lovely Lieder

And a leaf of collard green.

Lovely Lieder, Leontyne.

You know, right at Christmas

They asked me if my blackness,

Would it rub off?

I said,
Ask your mama
.

Dreams and nightmares!

Nightmares, dreams, oh!

Dreaming that the Negroes

Of the South have taken over—

Voted all the Dixiecrats

Right out of power—

Comes the COLORED HOUR:

Martin Luther King is Governor of Georgia,

Dr. Rufus Clement his Chief Adviser,

A. Philip Randolph the High Grand Worthy.

In white pillared mansions

Sitting on their wide verandas,

Wealthy Negroes have white servants,

White sharecroppers work the black plantations,

And colored children have white mammies:

              Mammy Faubus

              Mammy Eastland

              Mammy Wallace

Dear, dear darling old white mammies—

Sometimes even buried with our family.

              Dear old

              Mammy Faubus!

Culture
, they say, is a
two-way street:

Hand me my mint julep, mammy.

              Hurry up!

              Make haste!

Freedom

Is just frosting

On somebody else’s

Cake—

And so must be

Till we

Learn how to

Bake.

I could tell you,

If I wanted to,

What makes me

What I am.

But I don’t

Really want to—

And you don’t

Give a damn.

Freedom will not come

Today, this year

      Nor ever

Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right

As the other fellow has

      To stand

On my two feet

And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,

Let things take their course
.

Tomorrow is another day
.

I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.

I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.

      Freedom

      Is a strong seed

      Planted

      In a great need.

      I live here, too.

      I want freedom

      Just as you.

Go slow, they say—

While the bite

Of the dog is fast.

Go slow, I hear—

While they tell me

You can’t eat here!

You can’t live here!

You can’t work here!

Don’t demonstrate! Wait!—

While they lock the gate.

Am I supposed to be God,

Or an angel with wings

And a halo on my head

While jobless I starve dead?

Am I supposed to forgive

And meekly live

Going slow, slow, slow,

Slow, slow, slow,

Slow, slow,

Slow,

Slow,

Slow?

????

???

??

?

      
Colored child

      
at carnival

Where is the Jim Crow section

On this merry-go-round,

Mister, cause I want to ride?

Down South where I come from

White and colored

Can’t sit side by side.

Down South on the train

There’s a Jim Crow car.

On the bus we’re put in the back—

But there ain’t no back

To a merry-go-round!

Where’s the horse

For a kid that’s black?

Gather out of star-dust

      Earth-dust,

      Cloud-dust,

And splinters of hail,

One handful of dream-dust

      Not for sale.

i have been seeking

what i have never found

what i don’t know what i want

but it must be around

i been upset

since the day before last

but that day was so long

i done forgot when it passed

yes almost forgot

what i have not found

but i know it must be

somewhere around.

you live in the Bronx

so folks say.

Stokely,

did i ever live

up your

way?

???

??

?

Little dreams

Of springtime

Bud in sunny air

With no roots

To nourish them,

Since no stems

Are there—

Detached,

Naïve,

So young.

On air alone

They’re hung.

Sometimes there’s a wind in the Georgia dusk

That cries and cries and cries

In lonely pity through the Georgia dusk

Veiling what the darkness hides.

Sometimes there’s blood in the Georgia dusk

Left by a streak of sun,

A crimson trickle in the Georgia dusk.

Whose blood?…Everyone’s.

Sometimes a wind in the Georgia dusk

Scatters hate like seed

To sprout their bitter barriers

Where the sunsets bleed.

When the cold comes

With a bitter fragrance

Like rusty iron and mint,

And the wind blows

Sharp as integration

With an edge like apartheid,

And it is winter,

And the cousins of the too-thin suits

Ride on bitless horses

Tethered by something worse than pride,

Which areaway, or bar,

Or station waiting room

Will not say,

Horse and horseman,
outside!

With old and not too gentle

Apartheid?

If I had a heart of gold,

As have some folks I know,

I’d up and sell my heart of gold

And head North with the dough.

But I don’t have a heart of gold.

My heart’s not even lead.

It’s made of plain old Georgia clay.

That’s why my heart is red.

I wonder why red clay’s so red

And Georgia skies so blue.

I wonder why it’s yes to me,

But yes, sir, sir, to you.

I wonder why the sky’s so blue

And why the clay’s so red.

Why down South is always
down
,

And never
up
instead.

Get out the lunch-box of your dreams

And bite into the sandwich of your heart,

And ride the Jim Crow car until it screams

And, like an atom bomb, bursts apart.

Negroes,

Sweet and docile,

Meek, humble, and kind:

Beware the day

They change their mind!

Wind

In the cotton fields,

Gentle breeze:

Beware the hour

It uproots trees!

When I get to be a composer

I’m gonna write me some music about

Daybreak in Alabama

And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it

Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist

And falling out of heaven like soft dew.

I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it

And the scent of pine needles

And the smell of red clay after rain

And long red necks

And poppy colored faces

And big brown arms

And the field daisy eyes

Of black and white black white black people

And I’m gonna put white hands

And black hands and brown and yellow hands

And red clay earth hands in it

Touching everybody with kind fingers

And touching each other natural as dew

In that dawn of music when I

Get to be a composer

And write about daybreak

In Alabama.

The author wishes to thank the editors of the following publications which first printed the poems specified
: