They said you blew up America
With verse and words no one dared speak
A poet laureate politics sought to silence,
whose robes were decked
With Obe awards , Fellowships
Voice blown to the wind
The chant of America’s dirge remained
forever ratlling in an empty bowl
filled with forgotten promises
The told me you were the Dutchman a sailor on a doomed
Ship of state
A griot calling to us that we are a beautiful people
To write poems that were mirrors of our souls
That sang of our passage through this vale of tears
The told me you were our memoir,
A wandering with the Beat Generation,
A twenty volume preface to a suicide note
Counting the holes stars left in the sky
Hearing voices in the rooms next door
As we prayed into our folded chained hands
Our own music brought you home
To the recognition of our own natural selves
Blues People singing in the shadows
Weeping in the shade of the willow tree
You were our Leon Damas telling us
We looked ridiculous
In their clothes
their manners
their politics
Telling us we were
Fresh Zombies stinking in neon
House nigger crazies
dragging behind them
that thumping horrible sound
Which was not music, not drums, but shuffling
Our Aime Cesaire
Waiting for us at the end of daybreak
we who were the vomit of slave ships
Alone imprisoned in the whiteness of
a scream caught at the top of a dry stalk
Standing up to the waters of the sky
Calling us to return to our native land
But now,
now that you are gone they tell me
that you belonged with Lanston Hughs, Fredrick Dougas
Richard Wright, or Zora Neal Hurston
Now that you are gone they sing
Your praises, pour libations in your name
Now that you are gone I will remember your words
that we have been captured
that we labor to make a gateway
into the ancient image, the new
that we are in search of the sacred word
Freedom
