February 4, 2022

Phyllis Wheatey's poem, "On Coming to America" draws us into its soulful plea for democracy in religion and for erasure of prejudice.

"Some see our sable race with scornful eye"

Anyone "can join the angelic train."

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

"Their colour is a diabolic die."

Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,

May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

Celebrating Black History Month

 FEBRUARY 3, 2022

Langston Hughes' "Let America be America Again" is amazingly current even if it was written almost a century ago. 

Read it here and tell me if you are not moved! 

https://poets.org/poem/let-america-be-america-again

I admire how he moves to his final stanzas. It takes a lot of strength of spirit to be able to affirm the possibility of recovering the promise of what a land can offer.

"O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!"