My
grandfather tells me not to let them rub my head.
I don’t know
why this is, but, later, when
I hear the
tale a black boy’s crown brings his master good luck, I understand
something.
A Poem Also about Psychoanalysis
I studied
the problem inside me, something absurd
In the
world To live with, try to sing about, and sing.
And the poem
was the song
To live
with, try to sing and sing about.
In the world,I studied the problem inside me, something absurd:
History was
happening; my people still not free—
I was a
child learning Negro History.
For many children,
the age of 7 is the age of social awareness, a perspective on the world that
broadens beyond what is identified as local, and some beginning awareness of a
history beyond the one the child conceives as one’s immediate own. When I was 7, the March on Washington, the
bombing of the Birmingham church and the deaths of those four like-aged girls, and the assassination of President Kennedy
marked my entry into social awareness, and the particular quest for the civil
rights of Negroes. As I learned more
about the history and circumstances of that quest, I began to develop what
would prove to be twin interests—writing poems and understanding the complexity
of the human mind.
