We Need God in America Again Poem
Here are five poems that won't be heard at Donald Trump'due south inauguration, but maybe should exist. Five poems nearly America written beyond the span of the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first, 5 poems that seem particularly meaningful now.
The start, 'Let America be America once more', is by Langston Hughes, one of the swell figures of twentieth century American literature, and a titan of the Harlem Renaissance, much of whose piece of work was, every bit it is in this verse form, unpicking the idea of America equally utopia and as reality.
Claude McKay was some other great figure of the Harlem Renaissance, and his poem, 'America', also expresses the bittersweetness of being American.
In 'The Old South Meeting House', January Gill O'Neill looks upon the bricks and pews and memories encased in one of Boston'due south most important churches, and historically one of the about pregnant spaces for public debate, to contemplate, in a very different fashion to Hughes and McKay, the fractures and contradictions of America.
Michelle Boisseau'south 'The fury that breaks', speaks to a rage that is both personal and political, necessary and disquieting.
The last poem is peradventure my favourite. A compressed gem from James Baldwin, better known equally an essayist and novelist, but a wonderful poet likewise; a verse form untitled but which in xv lines embodies a lifetime of yearning, fear, despair, hope and possibilities.
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Permit America Be America Again
Langston Hughes
.
Let America be America again.
Allow it be the dream it used to be.
Permit information technology exist the pioneer on the manifestly
Seeking a habitation where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Permit America exist the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Permit it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That whatsoever human be crushed by one in a higher place.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land exist a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no imitation patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is existent, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(At that place's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this 'homeland of the free.')
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are y'all that draws your veil beyond the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the crimson human driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid program
Of domestic dog eat canis familiaris, of mighty beat out the weak.
I am the beau, full of forcefulness and hope,
Tangled in that ancient countless concatenation
Of turn a profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gilded! Of take hold of the ways of satisfying demand!
Of work the men! Of have the pay!
Of owning everything for ane's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Browbeaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the homo who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the i who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while yet a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, then true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That'south made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early on seas
In search of what I meant to exist my home—
For I'm the one who left dark Republic of ireland'south shore,
And Poland'due south plain, and England'due south grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a 'homeland of the gratis'.
The gratuitous?
Who said the costless? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who accept null for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags nosotros've hung,
The millions who take nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again –
The country that never has been even so –
And nevertheless must be – the state where every man is free.
The country that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro'southward, ME —
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Certain, phone call me whatever ugly name you cull—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who alive similar leeches on the people'due south lives,
We must accept back our country again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it manifestly,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will exist!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster expiry,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The state, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these groovy green states—
And make America again!
.
Showtime published in Esquire magazine in 1936; taken from the Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (Knopf/Vintage)
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America
Claude McKay
.
Although she feeds me breadstuff of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me force erect confronting her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my existence like a flood.
All the same, as a insubordinate fronts a male monarch in land,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Below the touch of Time'southward unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
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First published in 1921 in Liberator.
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Old Southward Meeting House
January Gill O'Neill
We draw jiff from brick
footstep on stones, weather condition-worn,
cobbled and carved
.
with the story of this church building,
this meeting business firm,
where Ben Franklin was baptized
.
and Phillis Wheatley prayed – a mouth-house
where colonists gathered
to plot against the crown.
.
This structure, with elegant curves
and round-topped windows, was the centre
of Boston, the body of the people,
.
survived occupation for preservation,
foregoing ornamentation
for conversation.
.
Let us gather in the box pews
once numbered and rented
past generations of families
.
held together like ribs
in the body politic. Let u.s. gaze upon
the upper galleries to the free seats
.
where the poor and the boondocks slaves
listened and waited and pondered
and prayed
.
for revolution.
Let us show to the plight
of the well-meaning at the pulpit
.
with its sounding board high above,
congregations raising heads and hands to the sky.
We, the people – the tourists
.
and townies – one nation under
this vaulted roof, exalted voices
speaking poetry out loud,
.
in praise and dissent.
We describe jiff from brick. Ignite the fire in united states.
Speak to us:
.
the linguistic communication is hope.
.
Commissioned by the Academy of American Poets, and published in 2016 on its website, Poems & Poets.
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The Fury that Breaks
Michelle Boisseau
.
The fury that breaks a grown-up into kids,
a kid into scattered birds
and a bird into limp eggs,
the fury of the poor
takes i part oil to 2 parts vinegar.
The fury that breaks a tree into leaves,
a leafage into deranged flowers
and a flower into wilting telescopes,
the fury of the poor
gushes 2 rivers against a hundred seas.
The fury that breaks the true into doubts,
doubt into three matching arches
and the arch into instant tombs,
the fury of the poor
draws a sharpening stone against two knives.
The fury that breaks the soul into bodies,
the body into warped organs,
and the organ into viii doctrines,
the fury of the poor
burns with one fire in 2 thousand craters.
.
Published in Poesy magazine, 2013
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Untitled
James Baldwin
.
Lord,
when yous send the rain,
remember near information technology, please,
a little?
Exercise
not become carried away
by the audio of falling water,
the marvelous light
on the falling water.
I
am beneath that water.
It falls with great forcefulness
and the light
Blinds
me to the low-cal.
.
.
The photos are, from top downwardly, the Statue of Liberty; Manhattan at night; Brooklyn Bridge; The Former Due south Coming together Firm, Boston; The ruins of Michigan Key Station, Detroit; Saxophonist in Washington Square, New York.
Source: https://kenanmalik.com/2017/01/19/let-america-be-america-again/
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