[I am Negro]

Once the men possessed the forms of the day and the women the forms of the night. Now it is changed. The women have been conquered by the metals of the sun. Neither can get peace. The world spins round like an iron disk. That talking branch, the ancient phallus, is now only a bandaged stump. One has to go fresh to the place where the tracks divided.

I cannot speak of the Bride and the Groom. But in a green place, a very quiet place, we find our beginning. The soul rose up and fell again in the rock pool at the source of the river. Pyramids of soul rising and falling with the invisible current that comes up out of the ground. In the dry nights I remember that place.

I am Negro.

1965 (367)