White African,
Walking negative,
Are you
Holy?
The sacred circle of the
Tantra?
White African,
Walking negative,
Are you
Proof?
Of the exception
Which proves the rule
Like the Hermaphrodite?
If color exists then
The absence of color must exist
As well
As a single face becomes dual
In a mirror,
As a single body becomes dual
In a shadow,
As a single thought becomes
Past and present
In the mind’s eye,
As the only difference between
The seen and the unseen is
Love,
I am as male as
I am female; I am as white as I am black.
There is no difference
Between She and He,
Between You and Me.
You are as female as you are male;
You are as black as you are white.
Together we are
One,
Yet together
We are not
One,
But as love knows,
Only love knows
Our subtle differences.
Let there be
No doubt
About this.
The absence of color
Is that the answer
To a moral question?
The Duchesse of Alba
I
Mariane Rosario Cayetana Alfonsa
Victoria Eugenia Fitz-James Stuart de Silva,
Twenty times Grandee of Spain,
Five times dutchess and the Dutchess of Alba,
II
Eighteen times Marquis, twenty times Countess,
Once Baroness and once viscountess,
Once princess descendent from Mary Stewart,
Once Empress, descendent of Eugenia de Montigo,
III
Her ancestor the last queen of France and
Goya’s mistress, the model for his masterpiece
The Nude Maja, one of the 247 masterpieces
In her possession which include
IV
Botticelli, Titian, Rubens, Velazquez
Fra Angelico, Bellini, Andrea del Sarto
Ribera, Canova sculptures, Greek statuary
The ship log of Columbus’ first voyage,
V
Forty thousand books and twenty thousand
Hectares of Spanish territory, so that
She can cross Spain from one end to the other
Without setting foot in property other than her own
VI
Which makes her the premier landowner of Spain
A Hidalgo rebel, multi-racial and
Cousin to the King with a strain of African blood
Derived from the Portuguese royal family,
VII
Face immobilized by Botox
Thick lips paralized in permanent Congolese,
Two black raisins for eyes lost between
The cheeks of two fesses of wrinkle-less pocked flesh
VIII
White kinky hair both halo and crown
That Anthraconite gaze full like trash baskets
Of tyranny, war, Inquisition and oppression,
Impossible to lift upwards
IX
An avalanche of cross dressing, chromosones and DNA
Limpid swinestones peering sphinx-like through centuries,
A geneological nightmare of love, piracy and property
Red wax sealed marriage contracts volumes long
X
Annexing and redrawing boundaries and feifs, titles and deeds
Until only the skeleton of marriage remained
Mortgages with bills of sales, notorical cordials and codas
Titles and preemptions, a paper loss trail of debt and inheritance.
XI
I once encountered “la Cugatana” and sketched
That face which resembled the white Bolognese lapdog in
Goya’s original portrait, a reminder of the
New World slavery, that Christopher Columbus gave the world.
XII
Twice widowed, a stable of lovers worthy of her rank
Ali Khan, Orson Welles, Prince Colonna, Cocteau
Dali, Pepe Luis Vazquez, Ernest Hemingway,
Raiding the thrones of notoriety for its princes
XIII
As if fatigued by her own pedigrees at 85,
The duchesse decides to marry a commoner for love,
Ordinary, anonymous, a nobody, devoid of power, fame or fortune,
Her aging and decrepit six children demand that
XIV
The dutchesse divide her 3 billion dollar fortune amongst them,
And exclude her unroyal husband from her will,
Having lived eight decades with and without love, she chooses love,
Her spouse happy to forever remain Frankenstein’s Bridegroom.
Wednesdays in Mississippi
My imagination honors you
Never having met you
Princess of the century.
In your wide-brimmed violet hat
Clara Bow lips, dark glasses
Gazing fondly at your Godson.
As he raises his right hand
At his swearing in on January 8th
During rough Washington winds.
Which whip the tickertape of this historic
Moment you helped make happen
A heavy burden for such slender shoulders.
No happen stance for you who have
Watched them all from Eleanor’s husband
To Bessie’s, Hilary’s and now Michelle’s.
The entire panorama of civil rights
The UN declaration of human rights
Equal employment, feminism and the pill.
Brown vs. the Board of Education
Martin’s March on Washington
The National Council of Negro Women.
And through it all every Wednesday
You mixed your Callaloo
Of white women and black women.
And their common cause in
Your Mississippi living room
Those sunny afternoons when they
Held each other’s hands and listened
To each other’s claim to independence
Adulthood, contraception and the vote
I will come to your Wednesday soirees
As soon as you invite me, your glance
Bright and incredibly astute
Hail to three everlasting heroes
The chestnut eyed princess who died
Yesterday at the magnificent age of 98
Pity the Queen so young!
I wake my little granddaughter
And look into her gray eyes
And tell her of this lady’s crossings,
The classrooms and the lecture halls
The political elections and the offices
The courtrooms and Halls of Justice
The caucus rooms, the Halls of Fame
The marches and the workers’ strikes
The president’s cabinet meetings
And the White House dining room
The forums and the United Nations
The conventions and the Press Conferences
The World Organization and for years
Her beloved NAACP
But always that Mississippi parlor
Sisters old and young, North and South
Black and white, rich and poor,
Girls, wives, widows, divorces,
Your endowed to fight on, the
Grand bow on your rakish
Broad beamed hat bobbing
Like a purple flag at half mast
The princess is no more here
On earth and as in a dream
I hear a viol and a gospel chorus
Singing God Bless America
There is a gust of wind,
Through the Aspens; I shed a tear
Silent in awe and reverence
Joining the throngs that commemorate
The water nymph of excruciating
Dignity that has left the world
Poorer, bleaker, for her absence
Her soft voice shimmering by day
Like the Capital’s pond at inauguration
The cold doesn’t penetrate the
Warmth of accomplishment
The winds subside meekly as
The president speaks slowly
Who has not dreamed of this day?
But Dorothy made this day
The rafters grow dimly
white I don’t need a submissive soul
To have lived deeply and wise
No one’s longing will capture me
I remember Marion’s singing
And Martin’s speechifying
Filling every space, how bright
How unsheltered it was then
The beating of your heart was louder
I dream that souls like yours
Are immortal and remain in this life
Too bad, snow maiden that in April
Your amazing body melted like snow
And now lies under its marble dome
In state as befits a stateswoman
You see everything, you remember all
Preserved in your enfolding angelic wings
For a hundred years from now
I bid you farewell, heroine,
Miracle worker fallen at my feet
Coming out of Selma’s marching
Prisoners, hostages, strikers for freedom
An icon, a mystery, a myth
Like the first mother Earth
My heart will never forge
This one, the one who gave her life
Up to a worshipped cause
But her courage
She takes with her to grave
If I can’t summon you will praise
Nor bring you back with tears
I’ll listen to the sparrows mourning
Revive my soul to heights
For the Mississippi women who
Still exist and carry on with
The sweet curl of lit flame, the battle,
Preserving your image and righteous deeds
Through dusty lashes a long slow gaze
Towards the history that you made
Smiling at the ironies of age which
Allowed you to witness that cold day
Where together you and I were blessed
With days of love and fame
And the wild wail of faith,
For there is no one on earth
More fearless than we are
Marching past all columns
In the familiar comprehensible world
Born neither too early nor
Too late, but having lived unique,
Beyond the History of it all.
For Dorothy Height, April 20, 2010
VII.
LETTERS
1998-2008
I Awoke in the Shaved and Sullen Heat
I awoke in the shaved and sullen heat
A castaway
Seeking land.
Climbing to the foot of the bed,
Curled around myself,
Framed by night’s
Black-lacquered door,
I watched you sleep,
Flung out against white
By some wild pitch.
Prancing in the half-turned profile
Of a male dancer on a
Priceless Greek vase
You slept on …
Through centuries
While I sat watch,
And Luna came
And turned you over,
And turned you again and again
As you dissolved
In a rash of fade-outs
On Aegean-blue film,
Trapped forever
In the changing positions
Of a delicate ceramic frieze.
I touched your curved and helpless hand,
Tendered,
And my heart froze,
A dazzled tourist
In the sixth century
Before Christ.
I Claim the Beauty of You
I claim the beauty of you
For my own.
David,
Marble-veined and smooth,
How penny-bright you are!
Can it only be
The disk of dawn light?
Depending on how you turn
You seem …
Engraved,
Gelatin-sprinkled in delicate tones
Of etched gray,
Submerged and
Emerging from
An acid bath
That can’t dissolve stone,
Nor love,
Nor the space around you
Which seems
More dense
Than steel.
You are so impossibly
Alone;
Yet even as you are modern,
You remain
Marble,
That ancient grip on immortality,
That Michelangelo
Turned into a natural man
With a kiss.
I Had Waited …
I
Had
Waited
So
Long
For this,
Finished
Some impossible march
Over mountains.
I was tired.
My lungs ached.
I
Turned my back
Against the sun
To read
Gingerly so as not to
Break in two or rather
Shatter into kaleidoscope
Patterns,
Reflecting each word
As a tiny mirror reflects
A few poor colored fragments,
Catapulting them into infinity,
And the stained-glass
Complexity of
My Lady of Clery.
How
Banal
A letter
Of Love
A Postmark From Where You Are
A postmark
From where you are—
Dread rises,
Beaten back
By a desperate heart
To stop
Angst,
That underbelly of
Love,
Opening like Naias
In stagnant water
Round my legs that
Flee
The underbrush of
Doom,
Torn and cut and bruised
Until I cannot
Stand but
Sit
And cannot sit but
Lay,
My bones
Ground into
Tears that leave
Black
On my white linen,
Black
On white stock,
Words
Written in a fine, clear
And steady hand,
Hands I’ve kissed
How many times?
YOU CAN’T DO THIS
TO ME.
Silence.
Red as
The postmark
From where you are.
A White Space
A white space
To be filled:
Fat,
Expensive,
White paper
With a faint, elegant
Watermark
Washed into
White again
As storms
Wash blue skies
White.
A white space
To be filled.
The envelope
(Blue-li
ned of course)
Waiting to one side
Discreetly,
A doorman averting his eyes,
Too much love,
Indecent,
Supercilious
On the sidewalks of New York.
A white space
To be filled.
Should I
Shed
One
Tear
And fold it
Neatly
Into four?
Special
Left eye and
Right hand,
A hole black as jet,
As hot and humid as
Mouth,
Too late.
Now
It’s done.
Anyway,
Left.
Eye and
Right hand
Running like the wind
Sand and grit in
Left eye and
Right hand.
He
Will touch
Left eye and hold
Right hand.
Delivery Letter
Dropped
My
My
Dropped them
Into
The mouth of a lion,
A roaring in my ears,
Salt
Sea-washed in
My
My left
My
Back
There
My
My
Don’t look back.
Tomorrow morning
My
My
I Kept Them All
B.R. for M.R., December 25, 1971
I
Kept them
All,
Your letters,
Spilling out of old hat boxes
And cardboard boxes
And shoe boxes.
I feel like
Some cranky old archivist
At the Bibliotheque Nationale,
Prisoner of
All this
Paper weight.
I should have burned them
All
Long ago,
Like the Hindu burn their dead
So that their spirits rejoin
Time.
Letters,
Weight,
Our history,
Scribbled on anything, anywhere:
Airline stationery
Postcards, yellow legal-pad sheets,
Rice paper, notebook paper, tissue paper,
Grainy beige hotel-drawer paper,
Letterheads from every
Hotel, hostel, embassy,
Inn, barroom, rest house,
Everytime a Knot Is Undone, a God Is Released Page 14