BARAKA, Amiri


Ka'Ba

A closed window looks down

on a dirty courtyard, and Black people

call across or scream across 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

tho we sprawl in gray chains in a place

full of winters, when what we want is sun.

We have been captured,

and we labor to make our getaway, into

the ancient image; into a new

Correspondence with ourselves

and our Black family. We need magic

now we need the spells, to raise up

return, destroy, and create. What will be

the sacred word?