Soledad (audio only)
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From Collected Poems by Robert Hayden. Copyright © 1971 Erma Hayden. Used with the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
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I
Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy:
Sails flashing to the wind like weapons,
sharks following the moans the fever and the dying;
horror the corposant and compass rose.
2017
When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
2017
here among them the americans this baffling
multi people extremes and variegations their
noise restlessness their almost frightening
1978