Poetry Show Helps Keep Etheridge Knight’s Voice Alive

We love Knight and are thankful for any efforts to keep his legacy alive. Read this wonderful piece about just such an effort from Telegram.com.

Etheridge Knight’s “Upon Your Leaving”

UPON YOUR LEAVING

Etheridge Knight

—for Sonia
 

Night
and in the warm blackness
your woman smell filled the room
and our rivers flowed together. became one
my love’s patterns. our sweat / drenched bellies
made flat cracks as we kissed
like sea waves lapping against the shore
rocks rising and rolling and sliding back.

And
your sighs softly calling my name
became love songs child / woman songs
old as a thousand years new as the few
smiles you released like sacred doves. and I
fell asleep, ashamed of my glow of my halo, and
ignoring them who waited below
to take you away when the sun rose …

Day
and the sunlight playing in the green leaves
above us fell across your face traced the tears
in your eyes and love patterns in the wet grass.
and as they waited inside in triumphant patience
to take you away I begged you to stay.
“but, etheridge,” you said, “i don’t know what to do.”
and the love patterns shifted and shimmered in your eyes.

And
after they had taken you and gone, the day
turned stark white. bleak. barren like
the nordic landscape. I turned and entered

into the empty house and fell on the floor
laughing. trying to fill the spaces your love had left.
knowing that we would not remain apart long.
our rivers had flowed together.
we are one.
and are strong.
 

Poem of the Day: Etheridge Knight’s “We Free Singers Be”

We here at POEM are going to be posting a new poem everyday. Tell us what you think!

“WE FREE SINGERS BE”

Etheridge Knight
“If we didn’t have music, dancers would / be soldiers too ,
holding guns in their arms, instead of each / other.”

—Father Boniface Hardin

We free singers be
sometimes swimming in the music,
like porpoises playing in the sea.
We free singers be
come agitators at times, be
come eagles circling the sun,
hurling stones at hunters, be
come scavengers cracking eggs
in the palm of our hands.
(Remember, oh, do you remember
the days of the raging fires
when I clenched my teeth
in my sleep and refused to speak
in the daylight hours?)
We free singers be, baby
tall walkers, high steppers,
hip shakers, we free singers be
still waters sometimes too.
(Remember, oh, do you remember
the days when children held our hands
and danced
around us in circles, and we laughed in the sun?)
(Remember, oh, do you remember
how we slept in the shade of the trees
and woke, trembling in the darkness?)
We free singers be
voyagers
and sing of cities with straight streets
and mountains piercing the moon—
and rivers that never run dry.

(Remember, oh, do you remember
the snow
falling
on broadway
and the soldiers marching
thru the icy streets
with blood on their coat sleeves?)
(Remember, oh, do you remember
how we left the warm movie house
turned up our collars
and rode the subway home?)
We free singers be, baby.
We free singers be.