truth

And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?

Though we have wept for him,
Though we have prayed
All through the night-years—
What if we wake one shimmering morning to
Hear the fierce hammering
Of his firm knuckles
Hard on the door?

Shall we not shudder?—
Shall we not flee
Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter
Of the familiar
Propitious haze?

Sweet is it, sweet is it
To sleep in the coolness
Of snug unawareness.
The dark hangs heavily
Over the eyes.

-- Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), prolific and influential poet, author, teacher, and first African American to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature.

Scripture reference: John 14:1-14, Easter 5A

Paul Robeson

That time

we all heard it,
cool and clear,
cutting across the hot grit of the day.
The major Voice.
The adult Voice
forgoing Rolling River,
forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge
and other symptoms of an old despond.
Warning, in music-words
devout and large,
that we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.

--Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), African American poet, feminist, and author, Nobel Prize winner in Literature, and first African American woman appointed Poet Laureate of the United States.

Scripture reference: Matthew 5:21-37, 6th Sunday after Epiphany A

Martin Luther King Jr.

A man went forth with gifts.

He was a prose poem.
He was a tragic grace.
He was a warm music.

He tried to heal the vivid volcanoes.
His ashes are
reading the world.

His Dream still wishes to anoint
the barricades of faith and of control.

His word still burns the center of the sun
above the thousands and the
hundred thousands.

The word was Justice. It was spoken.

So it shall be spoken.
So it shall be done.

--Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), African American poet, first Black author to win the Pulitzer Prize, also awarded the National Book Award, and other honors. This poem was written in 1968 after the assassination of Dr. King on April 4 in Memphis. Dr. King day is the Monday closest to his birthday of January 15, 1929.

The Sonnet-Ballad

Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
They took my lover's tallness off to war,
Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess
What I can use an empty heart-cup for.
He won't be coming back here any more.
Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew
When he went walking grandly out that door
That my sweet love would have to be untrue.
Would have to be untrue. Would have to court
Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange
Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort)
Can make a hard man hesitate--and change.
And he will be the one to stammer, "Yes."
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?

--Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), American, Poet Laureate of Illinois