I Must Be Black
Because once a time in a round mud hut
at the edge of the bottomless of pits,
I know that a three- or four-year-old roars with his gut
And he wipes snot with a broken jersey that barely fits
Because on the ratchet corners and bended streets
A growing child runs dust on tracks that gone bicycles drew;
And on his shined cheeks a laugh draws and sweeps
And he basks in the pastoral sun like a songbird and crew
Because the year is 2000 or 2001
And a child’s barely grown father must run to the city.
He must beg— (for working’s sake) ‘til pride comes undone—
The city that spurn him benches, toilets, parks, opportunity
Because ghosts of the ghoul that a people slayed
still lurk and parade office parks and boardrooms,
a child’s barely grown father must wade relics of Apartheid
In spaces of bigheads where he dances mops and brooms
Because a three- or four-year-old is now twenty
And the heirloom in his father’s stock is but lack;
I must work the same zero and struggle as plenty.
I must be black.
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