Harlem: A Poem

By Walter Dean MyersFound on the Internet:

http://faculty.lagcc.cuny.edu/eiannotti/harlem/harlem.htm

They took the road in Waycross, GeorgiaSkipped over the tracks in East St. Louis

Took the bus from Holly SpringsHitched a ride from Gee’s Bend

Took the long way through MemphisThe third deck down from Trinidad

A wrench of heart from Goree Island A wrench of heart from Goree Island

To a place calledHarlem

Harlem was a promiseOf a better life,

of a place where a manDidn’t have to know his place

Simply becauseHe was Black

They brought a callA song

First heard in the villages ofGhana/Mali/Senegal

Calls and songs and shoutsHeavy hearted tambourine rhythms

Loosed in the hard cityLike a scream torn from the throat

Of an ancient clarinet

A new sound, raucous and sassyCascading over the asphalt village

Breaking against the black sky over1-2-5 Street

Announcing HallelujahRiffing past resolution

Yellow, tan, brown, black, redGreen, gray, bright

Colors loud enough to be heardLight on asphalt streets

Sun yellow shirts on burnt umberBodies

Demanding to be heardSeen

Sending out warriors

From streets known to beMourning still as a lone radio tells us how

Jack JohnsonJoe LouisSugar Ray

Is doing with our hopes.

We hopeWe pray

Our black skinsReflecting the face of God

In storefront temples

Jive and Jehovah artistsLay out the human canvas

The mood indigo

A chorus of summer herbsOf mangoes and bar-b-que

Of perfumed sistersHip strutting pastFried fish joints

On Lenox Avenue in steamy August

A carnival of childrenPeople in the daytime streets

Ring-a-levio warriorsStickball heroes

Hide-and-seek knights and ladiesWaiting to sing their own sweet songsLiving out their own slam-dunk dreams

ListeningFor the coming of the blues

A weary blues that Langston knewAnd Countee sung

A river of bluesWhere Du Bois wadedAnd Baldwin preached

There is liltTempo

CadenceA language of darkness

Darkness knownDarkness sharpened at Mintons

Darkness lightened at the Cotton ClubSent flying from Abyssinian Baptist

To the Apollo.

The uptown ARattles past 110th Street

Unreal to realRelaxing the soul

Shango and JesusAsante and Mende

One peopleA hundred different people

Huddled massesAnd crowded dreams

SquaresBlocks, bricks

Fat, round woman in a rectangleSunday night gospel

“Precious Lord…take my hand,Lead me on, let me stand…”

Caught by a full lippedFull hipped Saint

Washing collard greensIn a cracked porcelain sink

Backing up Lady Day on the radio

Brother so black and bluePatting a wide foot outside the

Too hot Walk-up“Boy,

You ought to find the guys who told youyou could play some checkers‘cause he done lied to you!”

Cracked reed and soprano sax laughter

Floats overa fleet of funeral cars

In HarlemSparrows sit on fire escapes

Outside rent partiesTo learn the tunes.

In HarlemThe wind doesn’t blow past Smalls

It stops to listen to the sounds

Serious businessA poem, rhapsody tripping along

Striver’s RowNot getting it’s metric feel soiled

On the well-swept walksHustling through the hard rain at two o’clock

In the morning to its next gig.

A huddle of hornsAnd a tinkle of glass

A noteHanded down from Marcus to Malcolm

To a brotherToo bad and too cool to give his name.

Sometimes despairMakes the stoops shudder

Sometimes there are endless depths of painSinging a capella on street corners

And sometimes not.

Sometimes it is the artistlooking into the mirror

Painting a portrait of his own heart.

PlaceSound

CelebrationMemories of feelings

Of place

A journey on the A trainThat started on the banks of the Niger

And has not ended

Harlem.