My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | Page 112

THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD
It was Virgil’s Aeneas who I loved,
whose devotion moved me
when he fled Troy holding his son’s hand
& carrying his father. On the train
from Brindisi to Rome, they were the three
I thought of as the cars moved us through
our wherelessness, I who thought
I’d mastered this, I who only left & left,
& knew that I would not, in this world,
be Aeneas, & mourned my lack
of presence & character, & love,
that I had only ever carried my own head,
& into the other country, I who defended
the beauties of darkness (my worlds!)
in the grey, official halls of School
while my faces flashed with sorrow & rage,
I who started clear then, shamed,
learned to see home with an other-eye,
I who thought I could not love
both Virgil & Lumumba,
who secretly walked
with my flowers for them.
But it was grief I carried all along.
& it was love for my fathers,
in the country of Not-Love,
which caused me grief, & grief I carried
instead of love. Outside, the sunflower fields
— ploughed & harrowed —
said something to me about forgiveness.
Flower, forgive me.
Forgive me for the grief I held
instead of what I might have held.

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BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE

Dark with rain, giving me back
the beauty of the world,
those fields made me weep.