Today's Beautiful Gem: `For My People' by Margaret Walker (Part II)

"For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox Avenue
in the New York and Rampart Street in New Orleans, lost disinherited
dispossessed and HAPPY people filling the cabarets and taverns
and other people's pockets needing bread and shoes and milk and
land and money and Something-- Something all our own;

"For my people walking blindly, spreading joy, losing time being
lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when burdened, drinking
when hopeless, tied and shackled and tangled among ourselves by
the unseen creatures who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;

"For my people blundering and groping and floundering in the dark
of churches and schools and clubs and societies, associations
and councils and committees and conventions, distressed and
disturbed and deceived and devoured by money-hungry glory-craving
leeches, preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty
by false prophet and holy believer;

"For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way
from confusion from hypocrisy and misunderstanding, trying to
fashion a world that will hold all the people all the faces
all the adams and eves and their countless generations;

"Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody
peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of
courage issue forth, let a people loving freedom come to growth,
let a beauty full of healing and a strength of final clenching
be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial
songs be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men
now rise and take control!"

Om s'aantih: Peace! - J. K. Mohana Rao

<:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:>320<:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:>