C. L. R. James (From Pages)
Ellis Island
Men come here to see a statue
With hungry masses at it I knee
I come here to breathe again
The simplicity of the allusion
For I knew Moby Dick
Was not why alone
Our children were born
Blemished like the rainbow
So I come to see
Where he had slept resisting to return
While he decolonized my illusion
I have seen the pen in its might
How time was never fast enough
To catch a metaphor in flight
And yet always I fear more
The impotence of the sword
In a Proletariat hand
So this is where they flocked you
Among the impotent and dying
Among the anxious and lying
You who were our brightest son
Boldest mind,
Most fearless thinker of the time
I wept too without the Federation
But cannot find the courage to curse
My own wrong
I thought all games are wars
You think all wars are games
A means by which barbarity
Prevents my integration
With self and other self
And the selves
I become being civilized
I saw the sea
You invented the water cycle
The thing that no man yet has ridden.
Copyright © David Smalling | Year Posted 2010
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