For Claude Mckay

Boots pavements pounding, Brass buttons becoming stars Where fear was astounding The heart; and in all their wars We were but a margin, you I and expendable like small talk Before the mold infected dew. I from car to car with you walk The porter serving words on streets Of Harlem, the sable prince A duckling lost. I pound the beats And watch the enemy wince, O not the feudal demogogues of war Who mask the pain with courage And switch us like codes in a cold star You need a better leverage. You need village fiddle and fife dripping Like nightingale at deleicious dawn Crystal clear the heart a clarion calling The image hiding a hunted fawn. I too have stood in that Harlem since And long for spanish needle kiss Where the fertile female walk and mince Like wind the petals in white mist. Sweet singer of the greatest dawn, in Which the new self found old peace Far away from nightmare rope and din Of heart pent up and pangs for release. O Jamaica, full mast so the flag again Never dead the living spirit A man who sang, bearing human strain Lift high the torch, as he lit The dawn with it, beacon him with dawn The warrior in the trench of race The fire for the trembling timid fawn Africa's spell upon a full gleaming face.