02/06/2015
Happy birthday, Melvin B. Tolson! February 6, 1898.
Dark Symphony
~ Melvin B. Tolson
I
Allegro Moderato
Black Crispus Attucks taught
Us how to die
Before white Patrick Henry’s bugle breath
Uttered the Vertical
Transmitting cry:
“Yea, give me liberty or give me death.”
Waifs of the auctions block,
Men black and strong
the juggernauts of despotism withstood,
Loin-girt with faith that worms
Equate the wrong
And dust is purged to create brotherhood.
No Banquo’s ghost can rise
Against us now,
Aver we hobnailed Man beneath the brute,
Squeezed down the thorns of greed
On Labor’s brow,
Garroted lands and carted off the loot.
II
Lento Grave
The centuries-old pathos in our voices
Saddens the great white world,
And the wizardry of our dusky rhythms
Conjures up shadow-shapes of ante-bellum years:
Black slaves singing One More River to Cross
In the torture tombs of slave-ships,
Black slaves singing Steal Away to Jesus
In jungle swamps,
Black slaves singing The Crucifixion
In slave-pens at midnight,
Black slaves singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
In cabins of death,
Black slaves singing Go Down, Moses
In the canebrakes of the Southern Pharaohs.
III
Andante Sostenuto
They tell us to forget
The Golgotha we tread…
We who are scourged with hate,
A price upon our head.
They who have shackled us
require of us a song,
They who have wasted us
Bid us condone the wrong.
They tell us to forget
Democracy is spurned.
They tell us to forget
The Bill of Rights is burned.
Three hundred years we slaved,
We slave and suffer yet:
Thought flesh and bone rebel,
They tell us to forget!
Oh, how can we forget
Our human rights denied?
Oh, how can we forget
Our manhood crucified?
When Justice is profaned
And plea with curse is met,
When Freedom’s gates are barred,
Oh, how can we forget?
IV
Tempo Primo
The New Negro strides upon the continent
In seven-league boots…
The New Negro
Who sprang from the vigor-stout loins
Of Nat Turner, gallows-martyr for Freedom,
Of Joseph Cinquez, Black Moses of the Amistad Mutiny,
Of Frederick Douglass, Oracle of the Catholic Man,
Of Sojourner Truth, eye and ear of Lincoln’s legions,
Of Harriet Tubman, Saint Bernard of the Underground Railroad.
The New Negro
Breaks the icons of his detractors,
Wipes out the conspiracy of silence,
Speaks to his America:
“My history-moulding ancestors
Planted the first crops of wheat on these shores,
Built ships to conquer the seven seas,
Erected the Cotton Empire,
Flung railroads across a hemisphere,
Disemboweled the earth’s iron and coal,
Tunneled the mountains and bridged rivers,
Harvested the grain and hewed forests,
Sentineled the Thirteen Colonies,
Unfurled Old Glory at the North Pole,
Fought a hundred battles for the republic.”
The New Negro:
His giant hands fling murals upon high chambers,
His drama teaches a world to laugh and weep,
His music leads continents captive,
His voice thunders the Brotherhood of Labor,
His science creates seven wonders,
His Republic of Letters challenges the Negro-baiters.
The New Negro,
Hard-muscled, Fascist-hating, Democracy-ensouled,
Strides in seven-league boots
Along the Highway of Today
Toward the Promised Land of Tomorrow!
V
Larghetto
None in the land can say
To us black men Today:
You send the tractors on their bloody path
And create Okies for The Grapes of Wrath.
You breed the slum that breeds a Native Son
To damn the good earth Pilgrim Fathers won.
None in the land can say
To us black men Today:
You dupe the poor with rags-to-riches tales,
And leave the workers empty diner pails.
You stuff the ballot box, and honest men
Are muzzled by your demagogic din.
None in the land can say
To us black men Today:
You prowl when citizens are fast asleep,
And hatch Fifth Column plots to blast the deep
Foundations of the State and leave the Land
A vast Sahara with a Fascist brand.
VI
Tempo di Marcia
Out of abysses of Illiteracy,
Through labyrinths of Lies,
Across waste lands of Disease…
We advance!
Out of dead-ends of poverty,
Through wildernesses of Superstition,
Across barricades of Jim Crowism…
We advance!
With the Peoples of the World…
We advance!
Tolson, Melvin B. Rendezvou with America. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1944. Print.
