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Black Poetry Post #27 - Maya Angelou

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DevotionReader Series: 30 Ways of Looking at Black Poetry

“Let a race of men now rise and take control” – Theme for Week #4, April 22 thru April 29

 My Guilt - Maya Angelou

My guilt is “slavery’s chains,” too long
the clang of iron falls down the years.
This brother’s sold. This sister’s gone
is bitter wax, lining my ears.
My guilt made music with the tears.
 
My crime is “heroes, dead and gone”
dead Vesey, Turner, Gabriel,
dead Malcolm, Marcus, Martin King.
They fought too hard, they loved too well.
My crime is I’m alive to tell.
 
My sin is “hanging from a tree”
I do not scream, it makes me proud.
I take to dying like a man.
I do it to impress the crowd.
My sin lies in not screaming loud.


Maya Angelou, "My Guilt," Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Diiie, Bantam, 1971
 

Devotionreader.com 30 Days of Looking at Black Poetry -- Day:  One O Black and Unknown Bards   Two Listen Children    Three For the Record    Four Ballad of Birmingham  Five    Six The Idea of Ancestry   Seven I Want to Write   Eight A Grandfather Poem    Nine Sweet Sound   Ten My Brother is Homemade   Eleven Those Winter Sundays   Twelve SOS   Thirteen Resurrections    Fourteen Jessie Mitchell's Mother   Fifteen April Rain Song    Sixteen I've Got A Home in that Rock    Seventeen Earth Screaming   Eighteen Returning Spring   Nineteen Newark, for Now [68]   Twenty Dawn   Twenty-One Fir   Twenty-Two Comin Strong   Twenty-Three From a Black Feminists Conference Reflections on Margaret Walker: Poet   Twenty-Four My Africa   Twenty-Five Strong Men   Twenty-Six Today's News   Twenty-Seven My Guilt   Twenty-Eight Forward, Always Forward    Twenty-Nine The Seven Principles of Kwanzaa   Thirty What Harriet Said

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