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Racism 4 (Free verse) by Dovina

We hold a sound foundation, sad if for well-being, that God created man in His own image, male and female, black and white, butcher, baker, potter, poet. Believing makes it so. Encounter God, if still tuned in, through god-words of a poet. I am neither blind nor willfully unkind, admit to nothing new. This has come to us, and not to me alone. I am every race and every sex, all artists, tradesmen, killers, punks— and every time I raise a hand, ‘twas put there by a will and tendon provided by Most High. Since color, race and sex are moot, it only matters why. That hand is up to strike someone or render someone high.

ALChemy 17-Jan-06/3:26 PM
William Blake
"The Little Black Boy"
From Songs of Innocence (1789)

My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissèd me,
And, pointing to the East, began to say:

'Look at the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

'And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

'For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish; we shall hear His voice,
Saying, "Come out from the grove, my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice."'

Thus did my mother say, and kissèd me,
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.




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