Читать книгу The Glory Gets - Honorée Fanonne Jeffers - Страница 8

fear

SINGING COUNTER

after Hayes and Mary Turner, Valdosta, Georgia, May 1918

The rope, the tree,

the tired comparison to Jesus on the Cross. Avoid the tropes.

The metaphors.

This stands for that, but if no one black ever says that, how would

someone white learn

this? How would any of us? I desire the surprise of intellectual,

fractured lyrics.

Yet here I am, refusing refusal. Calling the mob out by name.

Not even safely—

as with an anonymous South—but uncomfortably. As with white

man by white man.

(I’m scared just saying it.) And locating each in case

you have trouble.

(My People are exceedingly patient.) There: the expected

poor, drunk one,

neck darkened in the field. He’s a nice cliché. But not the next:

a churchgoer

and father. A man who believes in Christ and the love of a virtuous

woman who fries

chicken for picnics and stirs up lemon cakes. After the lynching

he will continue

to believe and live his life in a good fashion. Beside him, his little boy,

smiling, his teeth

only beginning to loosen as he moves from baby to heir. He will grow,

remember his father’s

beauty, the godly meat in that chest. In the back of this crowd,

a young scholar

home from college, brought by his friends who wanted to see

if what their science

professor said was true, that niggers did not feel pain the same

as better men.

Too old for the rowdy festival, someone’s grandfather

remains at home.

An educated-in-the-North patrician who owns the newspaper

that later will run

the story. A savage raised his voice to a man. (One tenor

singing counter

to the other.) Or, he asked for his pay on Friday. Or, he

did not dance

when desired. Or, he did not step off the sidewalk for a lady.

(Should I explain

the Southern Anthropological Equation of lady plus race?)

Her flowered honor

required protecting. The imperative of her womanhood:

ax and gasoline

and black blood. Pig-like screams of what is not a man to the mob,

but a side

of meat. What never was in this place. I will admit these things

in my contemporary

time, but not out loud. My white friends and colleagues

(who are not

My People) would feel indicted by my saying, I look at you and yes,

I’m frightened.

I wonder if you would have sliced off my toe as I hung there, roasting over

the slowest fire

the mob could build. And later, killed my pregnant wife, the baby

still inside her.

I’m a sinner. I fear what I crave. Or love. Part of the falling,

the romance,

is a quandary keeping the present here. The past there.

A liquid-filled jar

of sex in a general store: before that day, its name was Hayes.

He made the mistake

of calling to her. Mary answered, her hand resting on her belly.

DRAFT OF AN EX-COLORED LETTER SENT HOME FROM THE POST-RACE WAR FRONT

A soldier in Baldwin’s Country & I can’t even dance

I say you can’t beat me Each day I get up to face fear

I made money & fixed my credit I escaped you dear my shame

Yet how to escape white space It’s impossible

to return to your embrace to rough-trading sweet vowels

to brothers on corners visiting my dreams I hear your whistles

smell collard greens on suburban wind I love you with deception

I’ll be back I’ll lift as I climb My remorse goes deep

to the whiteness in me my bones Forgive me You don’t know

the trouble I see I can’t tell these folks the truth

They don’t understand me & they don’t try Or try too hard

I want my birthright a mutual sight my own ancient rime

In the bright trenches of the office I open my mouth but choke

on bottled water Last week I returned for your wake

but left before the Home-Going I miss our surviving dark ones

The familiar is trivial & profound The strange a charge

in my blood I clutch & shriek at these strangers I left drums for

I sing B.B.’s mean old song

I END THE WINTER

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer …

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

I end the winter,

discontented and frightened—

an evil child

facing the coming blues,

the weight of glory, of expectation.

This never-ending war.

Every blade I sharpen

is sure of its intentions.

This war and that—

every one God has commanded.

I’m speaking a true word—

when it’s true that any bone

can explain why Samson carried

it into another’s hinterland.

Them bones, hambones,

my-Lord-what-a-morning trombones—

oh please, come with me

to smite the weak.

I know that I know what God

knows, because He lives

in my scripture-singing self,

and since I command the babble

stirring the bricks of their tower,

I am made a godly God

and can piss oceans to replace

dead men’s salt—

but if I were human, I would know this:

the soul has a body of its own

and will walk left or right.

The soul’s flesh will turn,

its sweetness no longer nectar

but unbearable kindred.

This war today:

dry bones.

APOLOGIA FOR SOMETHING

Fall in love with someone’s poetry and thus, fall in love

with that someone. How many times can I explain this?

I’m running out of water. I’m not a child anymore.

I’m talking to you.

I’m talking to myself, repeating a harpy’s creation,

the chatter of disappointed women.