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Dudley Randall - The Black Poets In 1971, Dudley Randall was a visiting professor of Black poetry at the University of Michigan, as well as an accomplished poet, himself while editing The Black Poets.
"I hoped to make The Black Poets the definitive anthology of black poetry...." I share with you some my favorite poems of Mr. Randall. |
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Souvenirs
my love has left me has gone from me and I with no keepsake nothing not a glove handkerchief lock of hair picture only in memory the first night the magic snowfall the warm blue-walled room we looking out at the snow listening to music drinking the same cocktail she pressing my hand searching my eyes the first kiss my hands touching her she close to me answering my lips waking at morning eyes oening slowly I approaching her house trembling kissing her entering the room waking all night writing a poem for her thinking of her planning her pleasure remembering her least liking and desire she cooking for me eating with me kissing me with little kisses over the face we telling our lives till morning more to remember better to forget she deny me slashing my love all pain forgotten if only she comes back to me The Profile on the Pillow After our fierce loving in the brief time we found to be together, you lay in the half light exhausted, rich, with your face turned sideways on the pillow, and I traced the exquisite line of your profile, dark against the white, delicate and lovely as a child's. Perhaps you will cease to love me, or we may be consumed in the holocaust, but I keep, against the ice and the fire, the memory of your profile on the pillow. Ancestors Why are our ancestors always kings and princes and never the common people? Was the Old Country a democracy where every man was a king? Or did the slave-catchers steal only the aristocrats and leave the fieldhands laborers street cleaners garbage collectors dish washers cooks and maids behind? My own ancestor (research reveals) was a swineherd who tended the pigs in the royal Pegstye and slept in the mud among the hogs. Yet I'm as proud of him as of any king or prince dreamed up in fantasies of bygone glory. |
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