NYU Black Renaissance Noire Winter 2014 | Page 14

A breeze reminds us of redemption The heat of bodies packed together in a steel cage Praying only for a small bit of wind She watched as the bodies vanished in the crowd Capitulating to the heat as the men drag them away The white of their shirts her last sight of them As blood dropped slowly from their faces The elation was too much to bear Celebrants could only see before them They could not see the masqueraders in the alleyway Had no sense of the underside She reached beneath her feet to pull a chunk of wood Shaped like a human heart She traced the spiral pattern that the insects bore And closed her eyes for silence The start of something, unlike that before But how would they know who could lead the way? Desperation from the weight of what was Stunned from the prospect of now And the journey of removal before them In the square, the youth chant boldly Know that anything melancholy is worthy of song They tie their hearts together with invisible string And strum the rhythm of destiny 12 From past to future, what will remain? Weighed skillfully like the carver’s tools Hieroglyphs etched into stone, he sits silently Like the ancient artifacts locked in colonial museums She had always yearned for hopeful days No matter what had become of the streets No matter the disappearance of men in her life No matter how small they asked her to be