The low beating of the tom-toms,
The slow beating of the tom-toms,
       Low . . . slow
       Slow . . . low —
       Stirs your blood.
               Dance!
A night-veiled girl
       Whirls softly into a
       Circle of light.
       Whirls softly . . . slowly,
Like a wisp of smoke around the fire —
       And the tom-toms beat,
       And the tom-toms beat,
And the low beating of the tom-toms
       Stirs your blood.

Bethesda Baptist Church chartered two buses.
We made our only father and son journey.
My mother’s caution did not caution him.
He grabbed my arm and off we went to see
a sea neither of us had ever seen.
Loudly, as always, he was asking questions:

“Are there more colored folks than white?”  “Yes, daddy.”
“Are black and white prayer birds flying with us?”
(That’s what he called the priests and nuns.)  “They are.”
“You say more than two football fields to the stage
and packed?”  “Yes, and a lot more behind us.”
He smiled.  “I told your mother, King knows Negroes.”

The heat kept wringing out its entrance fees.
Mahalia’s song built expectation’s hum.
The rabbi’s speech closed.  King began his sermon.
He built each word to verse, each verse to chapter
lifting the crowd to choir of memory,
the day transfixed in history, its echoes

spangling the ice-lined Mall five decades later, 
the summer’s sweat now frost in winter’s bite,
as masses form one congregation hearing
the gospel-steepened alto of Aretha
prepares us for the man who walks on votes
from dream into undreamed reality.

Bundled in willing layers I give witness.
A blind man slips on ice.  He’s near my age,
my father’s age, when I stood next to him
sharing the future’s call we would not share.
I think of how he’d smile when we first hear
a colored man called Mr. President. 

Most things are colorful things—the sky, earth, and sea.

                 Black men are most men; but the white are free!

White things are rare things; so rare, so rare

They stole from out a silvered world—somewhere.

Finding earth-plains fair plains, save greenly grassed,

They strewed white feathers of cowardice, as they passed;

                 The golden stars with lances fine

                 The hills all red and darkened pine,

They blanched with their wand of power;

And turned the blood in a ruby rose

To a poor white poppy-flower.

They pyred a race of black, black men, 

And burned them to ashes white; then

Laughing, a young one claimed a skull.

For the skull of a black is white, not dull, 

                 But a glistening awful thing;

                 Made it seems, for this ghoul to swing

In the face of God with all his might,

And swear by the hell that siréd him:

                 “Man-maker, make white!”

Lady, Lady, I saw your face, 

Dark as night withholding a star . . .

The chisel fell, or it might have been

You had borne so long the yoke of men. 



Lady, Lady, I saw your hands, 

Twisted, awry, like crumpled roots, 

Bleached poor white in a sudsy tub, 

Wrinkled and drawn from your rub-a-dub. 



Lady, Lady, I saw your heart, 

And altared there in its darksome place 

Were the tongues of flame the ancients knew, 

Where the good God sits to spangle through. 

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
    Dark like me—
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall, slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
    Black like me.

Fred Sanford's on at 12
& I'm standing in the express lane (cash only)
about to buy Head & Shoulders
the white people shampoo, no one knows
what I am. My name could be Lamont.
George Clinton wears colors like Toucan Sam,
the Froot Loop pelican. Follow your nose,
he says. But I have no nose, no mouth,
so you tell me what's good, what's god,
what's funky. When I stop
by McDonalds for a cheeseburger, no one
suspects what I am. I smile at Ronald's poster,
perpetual grin behind the pissed-off, fly-girl
cashier I love. Where are my goddamn fries?
Ain't I American? I never say, Niggaz
in my poems. My ancestors didn't
emigrate. Why would anyone leave
their native land? I'm thinking about shooting
some hoop later on. I'll dunk on everyone
of those niggaz. They have no idea
what I am. I might be the next Jordan
god. They don't know if Toni Morrison
is a woman or a man. Michael Jackson
is the biggest name in showbiz. Mamma se 
Mamma sa mamma ku sa, sang the Bushmen 
in Africa. I'll buy a dimebag after the game, 
me & Jody. He says, Fuck them white people 
at work, Man. He was an All-American 
in high school. He's cool, but he don't know 
what I am, & so what. Fred Sanford's on 
in a few & I got the dandruff-free head 
& shoulders of white people & a cheeseburger 
belly & a Thriller CD & Nike high tops 
& slavery's dead & the TV's my daddy-- 
   You big Dummy!
Fred tells Lamont.

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.