The Mask-
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We need the courage to create ourselves daily, to be bodacious enough to create ourselves
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daily-- as Christians, as Jews, as Muslims, as thinking, caring, laughing, loving human
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beings. I think that the courage to confront evil and turn it by dint of will into something
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applicable to the development of our evolution, individually and collectively, is exciting,
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I have written a poem for a woman who rides a bus in New York City. She's a maid. She
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has two shopping bags. When the bus stops abruptly, she laughs; if the bus stops slowly,
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she laughs; if the bus picks up someone, she laughs; if the bus misses someone, she- ha,
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ha, ha. So I watched her for about nine months. I thought, mmm, uh-huh. Now, if you don't
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know black features you may think she's laughing, but she wasn't laughing. She was simply extending
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her lips and making a sound -ha, ha, ha, ha. I said, oh, I see. That's that survival apparatus.
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Now, let me write about that, to honor this woman, who helps us to survive. By her very
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survival. "Miss Rosie." "Through your destruction I stand up." So I used the poem with Mr. Paul
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Laurence Dunbar's poem, "Mask[s]," and my own poem, "For Old Black Men." Mr. Dunbar
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wrote "Mask[s]" in 1892.
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We wear the mask that grins and lies, It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes,—
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This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
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And mouth with myriad subtleties.
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Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs?
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Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask.
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We smile, but oh my [God, Our tears] to thee from tortured souls arise.
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[And we sing, "Hey, baby-bye,"] We sing, but oh, the clay is vile
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Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world think otherwise,
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When I think about myself, I almost laugh myself to death,
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My life has been one great big joke, A dance that's walked
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A song was spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke
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When I think about myself.
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Seventy years in these folks’ world The child I works for calls me girl
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I say “HA! HA! HA! Yes ma’am!” For workin’s sake
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I’m too proud to bend and Too poor to break
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So…I laugh! Until my stomach ache When I think about myself.
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My folks can make me split my side I laugh so hard, HA! HA! I nearly died
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The tales they tell sound just like lying They grow the fruit but eat the rind.
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Hmm huh! I laugh uhuh huh huh… Until I start to cry when I think about myself
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And my folks and the little children.
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My fathers sit on benches, their flesh count every plank,
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the slats leave dents of darkness deep in their withered flank.
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And they nod like broken candles, all waxed and burnt profound.
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they say, "But sugar, it was our submission that made your world go round."
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There in those pleated faces I see the auction block
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the chains and slavery’s coffles the whip and lash and stock.
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My fathers speak in voices that shred my fact and sound
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they say, "But sugar, it was our submission that made your world go round."
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They laugh to shield their crying, they shuffled through their dreams
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they stepped ’n fetched a country and wrote the blues in screams.
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I understand their meaning, it could and did derive
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from living on the ledge of death They kept my race alive.
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By wearing the mask! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
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