A Song for Myself
I judge
My soul
Eagle
Nor mole:
A man
Is what
He saves
From rot.
The corn
Will fat
A hog
Or rat:
Are these
Dry bones
A hut’s
Or throne’s?
Who filled
The moat
’Twixt sheep
And goat?
Let Death,
The twin
of Life,
Slip in?
Prophets
Arise,
Mask-hid,
Unwise,
Divide
The earth
By class
and birth.
Caesars
Without,
The People
Shall rout;
Caesars
Within,
Crush flat
As tin.
Who makes
A noose
Envies
The goose.
Who digs
A pit
Dices
For it.
Shall tears
Be shed
For those
Whose bread
Is thieved
Headlong?
Tears right
No wrong.
Prophets
Shall teach
The meek
To reach.
Leave not
To God
The boot
And rod.
The straight
Lines curve?
Failure
Of nerve?
Blind-spots
Assail?
Times have
Their Braille.
If hue
Of skin
Trademark
A sin,
Blame not
The make
For God's
Mistake.
Since flesh
And bone
Turn dust
And stone,
With life
So brief,
Why add
To grief?
I sift
The chaff
From wheat
and laugh.
No curse
Can stop
The tick
Of clock.
Those who
Wall in
Themselves
And grin
Commit
Incest
And spawn
A pest.
What’s writ
In vice
Is writ
In ice.
The truth
Is not
Of fruits
That rot.
A sponge,
The mind
Soaks in
The kind
Of stuff
That fate’s
Milieu
Dictates.
Jesus,
Mozart,
Shakespeare,
Descartes,
Lenin,
Chladni,
Have lodged
With me.
I snatch
From hooks
The meat
Of books.
I seek
Frontiers,
Not worlds
On biers.
The snake
Entoils
The pig
With coils.
The pig’s
Skewed wail
Does not
Prevail.
Old men
Grow worse
With prayer
Or curse:
Their staffs
Thwack youth
Starved thin
For truth.
Today
The Few
Yield poets
Their due;
Tomorrow
The Mass
Judgment
Shall pass.
I harbor
One fear
If death
Crouch near:
Does my
Creed span
The Gulf
Of Man?
And when
I go
In calm
Or blow
From mice
And men,
Selah!
What . . . then?
Melvin B. Tolson, "A Song for Myself", from Harlem Gallery and Other Poems of Melvin B. Tolson (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1999).
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