Beatitudes of Hope

Black History Month 2022: February 23

In celebration of Black History Month, this week I’m sharing poems about the Black experience that encourage me to keep practicing hope. 

Peace & Blessings,
Marcie Alvis-Walker

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BEATITUDES FOR BLACK PEOPLE 

from Margaret Walker by “For My People” & Prayer of the Cosmos by Neil Douglas-Klotz

For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly…
praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god;  
They shall see god everywhere. 

For my people lending their strength to the years… 
washing, ironing, cooking, scrubbing, sewing, mending,
hoeing, plowing, digging, planting, pruning, patching,
dragging along never gaining, never reaping, 
never knowing and never understanding;
They shall feel their inner flow of strength return. 

For the cramped bewildered years we went to school
to learn to know the reasons why…
in memory of the bitter hours when we discovered 
we were black and poor and small and different and nobody cared 
and nobody wondered and nobody understood;
They shall be named the children of God – stamped with the seal of Cosmic Identity. 

For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to
be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and
play and drink their wine and religion and success, 
to marry their playmates and bear children 
and then die of consumption and anemia and lynching; 
They shall be surrounded by what is need to sustain their bodies. 

For my people walking blindly spreading joy…
shackled and tangled among ourselves
by the unseen creatures who tower
over us omnisciently and laugh;
They shall be returned from their wandering. 

For my people blundering and groping and floundering…
distressed and disturbed and deceived and
devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches,
preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty,
by false prophet and holy believer;
They shall be open to receive the splendor of the earth’s fruit. 

For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way
from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,
trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people,
all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations;
To them belongs the coming king-and-queendom in the province of the universe. 

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BENEDICTION 

From “For My People” by Margaret Walker 

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. 
Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. 
Let a second generation full of courage issue forth. 
Let a people loving freedom come to growth. 
Let a beauty full of healing and a strength of
final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood.
Let the martial songs be written.
Let the dirges disappear.
Let a race of men now rise and take control.