Compose
for Red a proper verse;
Adhere to
foot and strict iamb;
Control
the burst of angry words
Or they
might boil and break the dam.
Or they
might boil and overflow
And
drench me, drown me, drive me mad.
So swear
no oath, so shed no tear,
And sing
no song blue Baptist sad.
Evoke no
image, stir no flame,
And spin
no yarn across the air.
Make
empty anglo tea lace words—
Make them
dead white and dry bone bare.
Compose a
verse for Malcolm man,
And make
it rime and make it prim.
The verse
will die—as all men do—
but not
the memory of him!
Death
might come singing sweet like C,
Or
knocking like the old folk say,
The moon
and stars may pass away,
But not
the anger of that day.
About The Poet:
ETHERIDGE KNIGHT was an African American poet who made his name in 1968 with his debut volume, Poems from Prison. The book recalls in poetry his eight-year-long sentence after his arrest for robbery in 1960. By the time he left prison, Knight had prepared a second volume featuring his own poetry and works of his fellow inmates. This second book, first published in Italy under the title Voce negre dal carcere, appeared in English in 1970 as Black Voices from Prison. These poetry works established Knight as one of the major poets of the Black Arts Movement, which flourished from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s. With roots in the Civil Rights Movement, Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, and the Black Power Movement, Etheridge Knight and other American poets within the movement sought to create politically engaged work that explored the African-American cultural and historical experience through poetry.
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