I give you:

  REASSURANCE

  I must love the questions

  themselves

  as Rilke said

  like locked rooms

  full of treasure

  to which my blind

  and groping key

  does not yet fit.

  and await the answers

  as unsealed

  letters

  mailed with dubious intent

  and written in a very foreign

  tongue.

  and in the hourly making

  of myself

  no thought of Time

  to force, to squeeze

  the space

  I grow into.

  And what can I give you for that early morning hour when you come face-to-face with the realization that torture, in this world, is simply a fact of life? That if you look closely even in your own life, you can see its marks. Because, though your body may have been spared, one psyche is shared by the body of the world and it is the world’s soul that has suffered damage, and suffers it daily.

  I give you:

  TORTURE

  When they torture your mother

  plant a tree

  When they torture your father

  plant a tree

  When they torture your brother

  and your sister

  plant a tree

  When they assassinate

  your leaders

  and lovers

  plant a tree

  When they torture you

  too bad

  to talk

  plant a tree.

  When they begin to torture

  the trees

  and cut down the forest

  they have made,

  start another.

  And what can I give you to meet the challenge of the great pain that is sometimes the result of telling one’s truth to a world unused to hearing it?

  I give you:

  CONFESSION

  All winter long

  I’ve borne the knife that presses

  without ceasing

  against my heart.

  Despising lies

  I have told everyone

  the truth:

  Truth is killing me.

  I give you:

  ON STRIPPING BARK FROM MYSELF

  (for Jane, who said trees die from it)

  Because women are expected to keep silent about

  their close escapes I will not keep silent

  and if I am destroyed (naked tree!) someone will

  please

  mark the spot

  where I fall and know I could not live

  silent in my own lies

  hearing their “how nice she is!”

  whose adoration of the retouched image

  I so despise.

  No. I am finished with living

  for what my mother believes

  for what my brother and father defend

  for what my lover elevates

  for what my sister, blushing, denies or rushes

  to embrace.

  I find my own

  small person

  a standing self

  against the world

  an equality of wills

  I have lived to understand.

  Besides:

  My struggle was always against

  an inner darkness: I carry within myself

  the only known keys

  to my death—to unlock life, or close it shut

  forever. A woman who loves wood grains, the color

  yellow

  and the sun, I am happy to fight

  all outside murderers

  as I see I must.

  What can I give you to help you embrace the Black and the Red and the White in you? To help you know this fusion is a source not of disgrace but of lived presence in the history of our troubled country? A source of strength, and also of humor?

  I offer you:

  SOME THINGS I LIKE ABOUT MY TRIPLE BLOODS

  (The African, the European, and the Cherokee)

  Black relatives

  you are always

  putting yourselves

  down

  But you almost never

  put down

  Africa

  You are the last

  man

  woman

  and child

  to stand up

  for everybody’s

  Mother

  (though so much rampant motherfuckering in the language

  makes one

  blue)

  And I like that

  about you.

  White relatives

  I like your roads

  of course you make

  too many of them

  and a lot of them

  aren’t going anywhere

  but you make them really well

  nevertheless

  as if you know where they go and how they’ll do

  And I like that

  about you.

  Red relatives

  you never start

  anything

  on time

  Time itself

  in your thought

  not being about

  timeliness

  so much

  as about

  timelessness.

  Powwows could

  take forever

  and probably do

  in your view

  and you could care

  less.

  And I like that

  about you.

  What can I give you to help you see the soul of our brother or sister stolen from us by too much childhood abuse, too much adulation, too much loneliness, too much money? Too little self reflected in the faces around the home?

  The day will come again, as it has already, so many times, when you will see a “successful” person you love who has completely erased the very essence you thought so precious. This will send you into the depths of grief and loss. It is a tragedy that deeply wounds our common psyche. And yet, we must constantly struggle to understand, to be compassionate, to see how we ourselves may have contributed to our own abandonment. We must do this even as we mourn.

  I give you:

  NATURAL STAR

  (Which I wrote for our little brother, Michael)

  I am in mourning

  for your face

  The one I used to love

  to see leaping, glowing

  upon the stage

  The mike

  eager …

  Thrusting in your fist.

  I am in mourning

  for your face

  the shining eyes

  the happy teeth

  the look that said

  I am the world

  and aren’t you

  glad

  Not to mention

  deeply

  in luck.

  I am in mourning

  for the sweet brown innocence

  of your skin

  your perfect nose

  the shy smile

  that lit you

  like a light.

  I am in mourning

  for a face

  the Universe

  in its goodness

  makes but once

  each

  thousand years

  and smiles

  and sends it out

  to spread great joy

  itself well pleased.

  I am in mourning

  for your beloved face

  so thoroughly and

  undeservedly released.

  Oh, my pretty little

  brother. Genius. Child.

  Sing to us. Dance.

  Rest in peace.

  And what can I give you to help you remember the necessity of forgiving? On that day when a great wrong has been done to you, and for which forgiveness seems impossible?

  I give you:

  GOOD NIGHT, WILLIE LEE, I’LL SEE YOU IN THE MORNING

  (Ther
eby bringing the spirits of my parents, Willie Lee and Minnie Tallulah Walker, into the ceremony of your special day)

  Looking down into my father’s

  dead face

  for the last time

  my mother said without

  tears, without smiles

  without regrets

  but with civility

  “Good night, Willie Lee, I’ll see you

  in the morning.”

  And it was then I knew that the healing

  of all our wounds

  is forgiveness

  that permits a promise

  of our return

  at the end.

  What can I give you, as women, to remind you of our Goddess-given autonomy, on that day when you realize you are trapped in a situation with another that permits you no more room to grow than a potted geranium on a windowsill?

  I give you:

  A WOMAN IS NOT A POTTED PLANT

  A woman is not

  a potted plant

  her roots bound

  to the confines

  of her house

  a woman is not

  a potted plant

  her leaves trimmed

  to the contours

  of her sex

  a woman is not

  a potted plant

  her branches

  espaliered

  against the fences

  of her race

  her country

  her mother

  her man

  her trained blossom

  turning

  this way

  & that

  to follow

  the sun

  of whoever feeds

  and waters

  her

  a woman

  is wilderness

  unbounded

  holding the future

  between each breath

  walking the earth

  only because

  she is free

  and not creepervine

  or tree.

  Nor even honeysuckle

  or bee.

  What can I give you to help you bless the day when you fully understand that the most basic fact that all patriarchal religions try to deny and to make people forget is that the Earth is our Mother and that She must be honored, in order for our days to be long on this planet?

  I give you:

  WE HAVE A BEAUTIFUL MOTHER

  We have a beautiful

  mother

  Her hills

  are buffaloes

  Her buffaloes

  hills.

  We have a beautiful

  mother

  Her oceans

  are wombs

  Her wombs

  oceans.

  We have a beautiful

  mother

  Her teeth

  the white stones

  at the edge

  of the water

  the summer grasses

  her plentiful

  hair.

  We have a beautiful

  mother

  Her green lap

  immense

  Her brown embrace

  eternal

  Her blue body

  everything

  we know.

  We are the daughters of Mother Earth: it is in our naturalness and joy in who and what we are that we offer our gratitude, our worship, and our praise.

  Beyond this, I give you my word that I shall continue to struggle for and with you, to think of and work for your well-being as women of color, constantly. And to continue to find joy, and freedom, in this. To affirm your strength of character wherever I find myself. Your legendary loyalty and devotion. To honor your beauty and to believe in you without reservation.

  I know, from experience, that you are good, and that the world is only made better by your presence.

  I love you.

  What That Day

  Was Like for Me

  THE MILLION MAN MARCH OCTOBER 16, 1995

  The Flowering of Black Men

  In order to watch the Million Man March I had my television repaired. It had been on the blink for six or seven months. Because I allow myself only two hours of television a week, and because I often forget to use those two hours, I hadn’t particularly missed it. However, the moment I learned there was to be a march, I knew I wanted to see it. I felt whatever happened would be exciting, instructive, hopeful, and different. Television worth watching. Black men have a tradition, after all, of being very interesting.

  Lucky for me, a distant neighbor installs dishes (I needed a new one), and though he complained that it was a weekend and that he’d promised to take his son to play soccer, he managed to get everything installed—except for actually digging the trench in which the cable would be laid—within about five hours.

  The morning of the march I made my usual bowl of oatmeal and prepared to camp out in front of the television. I don’t remember who was speaking when I sat down, but pretty soon there was a young man who reminded me of John Lewis (years ago, of SNCC),* who was exhorting his brothers to “go home” and take on the ills of violence and cocaine. It was a refrain that took me back to the March on Washington of 1963. At that march I sat in a tree listening to Martin Luther King, Jr., asking us to return to the South. I thought then, as I do now, that to ask anyone to go home and work on the problems there is the most revolutionary advice that can be given. Hearing King’s words, I packed up and went back to the South, from which I’d fled, like my brothers and sisters before me, and I remained there, writing books, teaching, and doing Movement-related work, for seven years. It was an invaluable time. But one I’m not sure I would have had the courage to give myself if Martin had not spoken so emphatically in favor of it.

  Oatmeal finished, still cozy in my jammies, I realized I wanted to hear what every speaker had to say, even if it took the entire day. Which of course it did.

  What stands out? The children, most of all. The articulate, poised, and impassioned young boy and the brave, thoughtful, and serious young girl who asked fervently to be seen as children, protected, respected, and affirmed by black men. Queen Mother Moore, too old and weary by now even to talk, but still reminding us that, for our suffering and the stolen centuries of our lives, we deserve reparations. Rosa Parks. Jesse Jackson, a major teacher for this period. Clear, courageous, brilliant in his ability to use words to illuminate rather than obfuscate. Making connections. Naming names. Radiating a compassionate wrathfulness. Then, disappearing. Which was its own magic. Louis Farrakhan. Who would have thought he’d try to teach us American history using numerology? I was intrigued. Who even suspected that his mother was West Indian, and that he could not only honor her by recalling her wry humor but share her spirit with us by uttering her Jamaican folk speech? This was the man nobody wanted black leaders to talk to? It seemed bizarre.

  I can’t imagine becoming Muslim. Because it is a religion whose male Semitic God demands submission and whose spread, historically, has been primarily through conquest, I consider it unsafe. Anyone who is thinking about converting to Islam should first investigate its traditional application in the Middle East and Africa, and its negative impact on women and children in particular, and also on the environment. They should also read the work of Taslima Nasrin, recently threatened with death in Bangladesh for suggesting changes in Islamic law, and Why I Am Not a Muslim by Ibn Warraq.

  However, I did not think Farrakhan was proselytizing. I thought he spoke as a black man with a following, and therefore some independence and power, and that the urge to do something in these grim and perilous times in which we risk being re-enslaved—by drugs, television, violence, and the seductive traffic on the super-information highway along which most of us will have only a footpath—propelled him. If he is homophobic, as many of my friends believe, this is a great pity, and I assume he was asking forgiveness for that, knowing how black-male-phobic society can be, and how wretched that feels. If he is anti-Semitic (and I thought his son qu
ite beautiful denouncing this charge), he definitely needed to be forgiven, in front of the whole world, and that is what I felt he was asking for. I was moved by him, and underneath all the trappings of Islam, which I personally find frightening, I glimpsed a man of humor, a persuasive teacher, and someone unafraid to speak truth to power, a virtue that makes it easier to be patient as he struggles to subdue his flaws. His speech was a bit long, but I think this was a result of his having always been respectfully listened to by his Muslim congregation. As was clear from the presence of young women in the march, who had been asked to stay home, and of gay men, too, in the larger world, outside the Muslim community, it is only the part of his message that embraces us all that is likely to be heard.

  In any event, as someone who has been thrown out of “the black community” several times in my life, and someone who blesses my flaws for all I’ve learned from them, I found it heartwarming to see Jesse, Ben (Chavis), and Louis assert their right to stand together on issues so large that every one of us will have to strain to keep the race’s raggedy boat afloat. I did not feel left out at all. I think it is absolutely necessary that black men regroup as black men; until they can talk to each other, cry with each other, hug and kiss each other, they will never know how to do those things with me. I know whole black men can exist, and I want to see and enjoy them.

  I loved the flags! Each one a thrilling testament to our deep feeling of being people of many different nations, capable of coming together for the common good. The beauty of the men themselves was striking. This is the beauty of soul-searching, of spiritual seeking, and, yes, also of recognizing you are lost. It is the beauty all human beings have when they give up the act and settle down to work on the amazing and problematic stuff of life.

  After the march ended, and while I was still thinking of the powerful pledge to change lives, directions, communities, that Farrakhan led a million (or two million) black men through, I knew I needed to take a walk, to put my feet on the earth, to see late-flowering shrubs, and to stand among tall trees. I have known black men in my life who are flexible like the grass and sheltering like the trees. But many black men have themselves forgotten they can be this way. It is their own nature that they miss. And they have tried to find it again in drugs, sex, information overload, oppression of women and children, and violence. As I see it, black men have a deep desire to relearn their own loveliness, as Galway Kinnell expresses it in these lines: