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After the Poetry Reading, Black (with annotations) 3
![112
turned to leave the stage,
but stage itself seemed turning,
follow-moving, circling me,
enfolding me upfront--though I felt leaving down the aisle
not looking back--until some curtain roase
and audience was new, was Black,
was waiting.
Must be some trick my Trans-s-lator knew:
pushed in that chromobutton “Black”
and only heard the beating of my heart;
kept pushing it till floor rose up on sounds
like hoofbeats on the grass,
booBOOF- booBOOF- booBOOF-, and faster,
till breath around was tight as if
the climax of some play was on
and I was sitting in the crowd--
booBOOF- booBOOF- booBOOF- as all in the air
[*A listener at City College admired this breathing technique.*]
The brother next to me turned like a page
close to my eyes;
“ThaCHU he was talking bout?” he said.
He meant the short Black man upfront
who meant the poem I mean to write
as I said “Yes”
up-coming from The Veil…
[*Du Bois’s well-known “veil” idea in The Souls of Black Folk.*]
A neat, pale hand extended blocked my path](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/2/c/6/2c68041e-447e-42fd-b316-65c9c437d5ce/attachment/0e236a4541d4b0bd23f9369e08dc3493.jpg)
After the Poetry Reading, Black (with annotations) 4
After the Poetry Reading, Black (with annotations) 2
![ah crease his paper roun the
Bobby Seale
foldin it slow for his arm.
Them brothers
getting they vitamin D
getting they 7-de/hy/dro
cho/les/ter/ol--
yeah--
when that blackness come
they gonna live.
1970
19[undecipherable]
Black Man, 13th Floor
Hotel Ameridemocratogrando
12 floors below me, 12 above
stops nothing at my life
(this 13th floor
this legacy from black charioteers
swung low, stolen away
ridin middle passage
between the breathin floors
ashcakers brought to bed on clay
massa’s thirteeners](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/f/6/e/f6ec82ae-7f65-4f12-b43a-7a85bf00f73c/attachment/fe86336d9bd0fc2e85e9b07218d94721.jpg)
Black Man, 13th Floor (with annotations) 1
![Such a Birthday, Marie-France (2006)
Birthdays? Who counts them?
Too many? Who cares?
Troubles? Surmount them!
No elevator? Take stairs.
Pebble hurts you in your shoe?
Shake it, take it home with you.
Maybe it’s a thing you need
(for some necklace came this bead).
Birthdays? They’re one way to know
why your life has taught you so.
“Taught me what?” did you ask?
POOpaTApik! That’s your task!
[*The Bard of Montparnasse strikes again. 21.02.2006*]](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/c/f/4/cf4414d5-770d-47e8-9e35-de574d0b280c/attachment/aa1e942b1e24bf7263dce9176fd9c1b7.jpg)
Such a Birthday, Marie-France (2006)
![169
“wash your face”
though dried to somber at the sign
of white so deftly brown again.
Final sip was “All depends
which room you’re in I guess;
just don’t come up behind me;
makes me nervous since the war”;
but didn’t say when the war began
nor dare count all those faces,
clean and white,
that came up from behind
1969
1970
169
A View from the White Helmet
[*”A View from the White Helment”: Written at the start of the 1960’s, when the African nations were beginning to become free. Note that some African leaders received their education at oxford.*]
[*Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of the President of the USA, FDR, liked this poem, according to a City College colleague who knew her, William Turner Levy.*]
A glittering thing,
Africa-long
Approaches,
Gliding through legendary leaves,
Traversing ancient rivers.
A clattering thing,
Africa-long
Echoes,
Like bracelets of ivory](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/3/3/8/33889ae5-b46a-4ac4-a06e-48fe3e7015ef/attachment/15a456791f027855d0ffaeff2e29126a.jpg)
Black Humor in France: for Etha (with annotations) 2
![163
[*”Bill Collector in Harlem”: “Hi, there!: was a phrase actually seen on a low-income project hallway door in Brooklyn by the author, though the scene is here transferred to Harlem, which is in upper New York City.*]
Bill Collector in Harlem
“Hi, there!”
Some Harlem child
Had chalked on the hallway door.
Not a Georgia scrawl,
Not a “Hi, y’all”
In dirt on a sharecropper’s wall.
But tenement white,
Pert and bright,
Erect, and spelled just right
For the cockroach fat,
The shoebrush rat,
And the Upper New York cat.
Through a heavy hallway door
Some Harlem child said
“Hi, there!”
(cs. 1961)
1962](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/0/0/1/0017d2cc-17c2-4471-83b2-8951f78217e9/attachment/6f398ca2eb73bb8b60157979e893b7be.jpg)
Bill Collector in Harlem (with annotations)
![168
When this white though healing hand
Trespasses and takes command.)
(Hate for friends and hate for foes
Who have not endured hate’s blows
Digested with the crumbs of years.
What can stop these ancient tears
Burning in a little face
So captive in a starched embrace?)
(cs. 1963)
1964
168
Black Humor in France: For Etha
[*Written in Seyssins about a real incident, circumstances that show how humor can help heal the psyche. See my autobiographical essay “A Force in the Field, CAAS, Vol. 18, on this poem.*]
Outshouting bathwater,
whitefaced with soap,
behind me doorbursting,
“BOO!” right at my ear you jumped,
hopping to crouch and grin as
“DAMN!” went coffee sloshing.
“White folks scareya, hunh?”
Black only growled,
but soapface pranced and crowed
“think white!” “think snow!”
till sip of coffee made the chuckle](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/d/a/9/da98e393-0736-41da-a393-b1a6ca4080a2/attachment/91f4690eadf544ea3a7a53c78dff419a.jpg)
Black Humor in France: for Etha (with annotations) 1
AFTER THE POETRY READING, BLACK 2