The Propaganda of History

—for W.E.B. Du Bois

We’re the remnant of ten million
transported out of the of the dark
beauty of our mother continent
into the new-found Eldorado
of the West. We descended
into Hell. After the third century
we rose from the dead to achieve
democracy, an upheaval unrivaled
in all past histories until now.
In dumb eyes, it’s made mockery
& spit upon, degrading the eternal
mother; a sneer at human effort,
the mighty effort in the mightiest
century, by aspiration & art distorted:
a compromise with truth in the past
to make peace in the present
to guide policy in the future.

We read the truer deeper facts
of three decades with great despair
at once so simple & human, yet futile
There’s no villain, no idiot, no saint
just men who crave ease & power
men who know want & hunger
men who have crawled, who strive
with ecstasy of fear & strain
balked of hope & hate. Yet the rich
world is wide enough for all, wants
all, needs all. So slight a gesture
a word might set the strife in order
not with full content, but with growing
dawn of fulfillment. Instead roars
the crash of hell. After its whirlwind
in academic halls, learned in traditions
of elms & elders, the teacher in gown
shaped wisdom hears the voice of God
& sneers at “chinks” & “niggers”
as he looks into the upturned faces
of youth. He says the nation has changed
its Southern views of the vain imagination
of the political equality of man. Yet flames
of jealous murder sweep the earth, while
brains of little children smear the hills.