Langston Hughes

Before the month is gone, the great Langston Hughes.

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Daybreak in Alabama When I get to be a composer I'm gonna write me some music about Daybreak in Alabama And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist And falling out of heaven like soft dew. I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it And the scent of pine needles And the smell of red clay after rain And long red necks And poppy colored faces And big brown arms And the field daisy eyes Of black and white black white black people And I'm gonna put white hands And black hands and brown and yellow hands And red clay earth hands in it Touching everybody with kind fingers And touching each other natural as dew In that dawn of music when I Get to be a composer And write about daybreak In Alabama.

e.e. cummings and Stephen Sondheim

[as freedom is a breakfastfood]
By E. E. Cummings 1894–1962

as freedom is a breakfastfood

or truth can live with right and wrong

or molehills are from mountains made

—long enough and just so long

will being pay the rent of seem

and genius please the talentgang

and water most encourage flame

as hatracks into peachtrees grow

or hopes dance best on bald men’s hair

and every finger is a toe

and any courage is a fear

—long enough and just so long

will the impure think all things pure

and hornets wail by children stung

or as the seeing are the blind

and robins never welcome spring

nor flatfolk prove their world is round

nor dingsters die at break of dong

and common’s rare and millstones float

—long enough and just so long

tomorrow will not be too late

worms are the words but joy’s the voice

down shall go which and up come who

breasts will be breasts thighs will be thighs

deeds cannot dream what dreams can do

—time is a tree(this life one leaf)

but love is the sky and i am for you

just so long and long enough

GREEN FINCH AND LINNET BIRD
By Stephen Sondgeim

Green finch and linnet bird,
Nightingale, blackbird,
How is it you sing?
How can you jubilate,
Sitting in cages,
Never taking wing?

Outside the sky waits,
Beckoning, beckoning,
Just beyond the bars,
How can you remain,
Staring at the rain,
Maddened by the stars?
How is it you sing
Anything?
How is it you sing?

Green finch and linnet bird,
Nightingale, blackbird,
How is it you sing?
Whence comes this melody
constantly flowing?
Is it rejoicing or merely halloing?
Are you discussing
Or fussing
Or simply dreaming?
Are you crowing?
Are you screaming?

Ringdove and robinet,
Is it for wages,
Singing to be sold?
Have you decided it’s
Safer in cages,
Singing when you’re told?

My cage has many rooms,
Damask and dark.
Nothing there sings,
Not even my lark.
Larks never will, you know,
When they’re captive.
Teach me to be more adaptive.

Green finch and linnet bird,
Nightingale, blackbird,
Teach me how to sing.
If I cannot fly,
Let me sing.

To me, both poems speak of freedom although I am not sure of the cummings poem. The Sondheim poem seems to address the artist. Of course when addressing a work, it is in the eye of the reader. I chose these two poems because freedom has been much on my mind.

Freedom is a complex issue. Veterans have bumper stickers that state that "freedom isn't free, veterans pay for it." I believe that is true. On an individual basis, if you want to be free you have to pay for it too and no price is too dear. The foe of freedom is fear. If fear overwhelmed the desire to be free, then you will be forever in the cage even if the gate is unlocked.

Sondheim speaks of relative freedom. If he can't have total freedom or freedom to fly, then he insists on relative freedom, he must have freedom to sing from his cage. I know I want total freedom and someday I might not be able to have it. I can have it now. No price is too great for it. I remember listening to a man who lived in Russia under Soviet rule. He was making a good living as a scientist but he came to the USA where he earned less money. A journalist asked if he thought that was a good trade. He said without freedom, money wasn't worth it.

Fear is a strong emotion and it keeps people in chains long after the chains have been unlocked. It keeps people with their abusers and many people who escaped prisons and concentration camps all report being held in unlocked cells of fear. It takes a lot of treatment and love from family and friends for them to walk outside those cells.

As I wrote, freedom is a complex issue or at least for me. I have one foot outside my cell door and am trying to leave my prison and conquering the fear is the biggest barrier. We all have to be knights of the round table in seeking the Holy Grail. The Grail is what sets each of us free and it is different for each of us.

Belle Randall

Cast Off

By Belle Randall

If thy own hand . . . offend thee
—Matthew 18:8

Self-hatred? No, no dear: that seems inflated—

chagrin: the shame you feel when friends withdraw

for reasons they leave tactfully unstated,

leaving you to guess at your faux pas

From all you did and didn’t say for ages,

as in some vast congressional report,

your sin, at last, is lost among the pages;

a snow of detail cuts inquiry short.

In downtown windows where late sunlight glares,

you see yourself, as if you’d never met.

Who is this rumpled lookalike who wears

a blouse like yours, the armpits dark with sweat?

Your eighth grade diary still makes you cringe

saved—for what?—that you might now despise

pages time has lent a jaundiced tinge

pouring forth their daisy-dotted i’s?

Some second-guesser in you finds untrue

the echo of your own voice in your ears,

and wants to ask which one most sickens you:

the voice that whines with neediness and fears,

Or one no doubts can ever undermine,

that speaks before a general assembly,

proclaiming loudly what to do with thine

own hand (or his, or mine), should it offend thee?

Source: Poetry (September 2009).

I am sure we have all been in situations in which a friend or even a set of friends turn against you and you are at a loss as to why this has happened. I think the above poem captures this awkward and terrifying moment or memory well. Sometimes, we find out the reason, and it is not just or it is based on a lie that is told by someone we thought was our friend. It can be based on a shared confidence that someone we trusted with our lives who decided to bare all for unknown reasons. Ah, yes. I have been there. After all these years I can remember with as much puzzlement as I had in those years. In some memories I have began to re-frame them with new insight and with that new information in understanding what had happened. It still hurts though.

It helps to read Randall's poem though. To have our pain and sorrow in someone's else's words, to have them echoed in someone's else pain but portrayed so well in a poet's ability to express it and with that talent and know how some detachment for it means nobility and the knowledge it has happened to someone else and someone as sensitive as this poet.

There are many reasons for the existence of poets and in this month of poetry this is one function I like to reflect on. Poets give us validity of feeling, of existence and of purpose. Reading of our pain and what we go through in their words makes things a bit better to bear and the tears are less because we feel more dignified. Yes, we say to ourselves, that was how it was. That was how I felt. Yes, this poet knows and can feel and say what it was to be me on that summer day when my friends turned against me. It felt like I hated me as they must have hated me too. Thank you poets of the world.

Poets become our representatives, our attorneys, our knights and with their swords they go out and create for each of us a sense of value in the courts of society and culture. We are not such bad people when the poets speak for us as they often do and they even speak for those who's voices have been silent forever by cruel tyrants and gods. They are the true equalizers as long as their voices cannot be silenced and few have been. They have been shot, hung, poisoned, gassed but their poems still speak loud and clear. We, as a human race, have much to be grateful for to this group of human beings. Thank you again.