| 
 Ka 'Ba by Imamu Amiri Baraka 
						A closed window looks downon a dirty courtyard, and black people
 call across or scream or walk across
 defying physics in the stream of their will
 
 Our world is full of sound
 Our world is more lovely than anyone's
 tho we suffer, and kill each other
 and sometimes fail to walk the air
 
 We are beautiful people
 with african imaginations
 full of masks and dances and swelling chants
 
 with african eyes, and noses, and arms,
 though we sprawl in grey chains in a place
 full of winters, when what we want is sun.
 
 We have been captured,
 brothers. And we labor
 to make our getaway, into
 the ancient image, into a new
 
 correspondence with ourselves
 and our black family. We read magic
 now we need the spells, to rise up
 return, destroy, and create. What will be
 
 the sacred words?
 |