Seventeen Haiku Stanzas for Richard Wright

Sunrise ripples west
over the lake in December—
no warmth, little light

 

            high rise after high
            rise hard between the IC
            tracks and lower State

 

like Stonehenge hard off
the Ryan driving hard for
the Loop, then O’Hare

 

            no druids here—only
            the Housing Authority
            with its deep need to

 

keep the cold city
separate but equal, bound
grid of black, white, brown

 

            The middle passage
            ends here, abruptly, in
            concrete and silence

 

Chicago, blind beast,
thresher of the east, middle
and west, rendering

 

            livestock, lumber, grain
            and capital into art
            and architecture

 

As he walks Stony
Island—exhaust, exhaustion,
the black boy wanders

 

            the middle passage
            a journey without end, by
            way of Abe Lincoln

 

his world much bigger
than it was, so much smaller
and so much the same

 

            so much he did not
            know, the grey reality
            of industry, ice

 

apartment full of
cold, roaches, and memories
innocents sleeping

 

            the long dream of
            emancipation streaming
            through his mind, unkind

 

Mississippi or
Chicago, two sides of
one fence, Jackson or

 

            Chicago, two sides of one
            fence, between the white man and
            the chilly blues, don’t

 

make no difference—
blues is falling, falling down
like December rain