Free verse № 137042
Racism 4
We hold a sound foundation,
sad if for well-being, that
God created man in His own image,
male and female, black and white,
butcher, baker, potter, poet.
Believing makes it so.
Encounter God, if still tuned in,
through god-words of a poet.
I am neither blind
nor willfully unkind,
admit to nothing new.
This has come to us,
and not to me alone.
I am every race and every sex,
all artists, tradesmen, killers, punksâ
and every time I raise a hand,
âtwas put there by a will and tendon
provided by Most High.
Since color, race and sex are moot,
it only matters why.
That hand is up to strike someone
or render someone high.
46 comments
#2. http://poemranker.com/poem-details.jsp?i
#3. http://poemranker.com/poem-details.jsp?i
To pre-answer the burning question, i.e., Why, other than for her usual inanity, does Dovina continue this dimtard (a passé word) series?:
1. Teaching myself how to be alone.
2. For the insult it delivers to the myriad tastefully correct exposés, with their race-is-nonexistent glitz, that clutter the internet.
3. To use the dross along Passé Road, whatever Popular Prudence drops, to make trinkets for sale on the sixties market.
"The Little Black Boy"
From Songs of Innocence (1789)
My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissèd me,
And, pointing to the East, began to say:
'Look at the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.
'And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
'For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish; we shall hear His voice,
Saying, "Come out from the grove, my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice."'
Thus did my mother say, and kissèd me,
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,
I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh! my soul is white.
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black as if bereaved of light.
In today's culture that can be taken in a negative way that Blake must not have meant.
I'm glad you know what he meant because folks have been arguing about the meaning of this poem since it was written.
But maybe that's the point. Maybe racism like this poem is not a matter of definition but a matter of personal opinion drawn from the need to not feel inferior. In the end the black boy feels superior to the english boy. He imagines he is superior and that in his superior ability to absorb God's light he wins the love of the white boy. At least that is another way the poem can be read.
- Bob Charles, editor of The Gazebo
We were tempted to give an example of what we're talking about but decided against it. There's enough examples of this kind of writing on the poetry newsgroups. Someone, somewhere, decided that leaving out the "the" articles in poems somehow made them sound more heartfelt and meaningful. It doesn't. All it does is make every piece written this way sound exactly like every other piece. It isn't clever, it isn't creative. It isn't even original. It's merely another sign of bad poetry.
- Bob Charles
http://www.alsopreview.com/gaz/lessons/p
I think he nails all our asses at least once with the many cliches he exposes.
Even then, it would be better to say you hold a bunch of things to be true, thereby making a foundation (that holds you.)
See, it works.
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