i arrive /Langston
the new york times told me when to come
but I attended your funeral
late by habit of colored folk and didnt miss a thing
you lie on saint Nicolas avenue
between the black ghetto & sugar hill
where slick black limousines await yr body
for the final haul from neutral
santa claus avenue harlem usa
you are dressed sharp & dark as death
yr cowlick is smooth like the Negro gentlemen
in the ebony whiskey ads /
gone is yr puff of face yr paunch of chest tho
yr lips are fuller now especially on the side
where hazard had you a cigarette /
two sisters fel
white people
strange customed
clan tongued clustering dark people ports ages of europa
trains boats and planes
dionne warwick says
& in new york
fluid dark causeways gang-planked streets eerie lights of darkness clustering natives
tightly bundled europeans of the 400 millennial
fighting peoples of clans & kabalas
axed gunshot ancestors
stained blood fibers of cellular centuries
some baked some fried
some burned some blue……….
copyright 1965, by David Henderson.
