a poem to motivate a mind

 

A POEM TO MOTIVATE A MIND

 

In the Sankofa sonnet "Frederick Douglass" Robert Hayden created a motive as needful then (1966) as now (2021) for navigating the treachery of world affairs and unstable conditions.  How "superb in love and logic" was Douglass's mind.  It was and remains one model of how a person must quest for "this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful/ and terrible thing, needful to man as air/ usable as earth, when it belongs at last to all…"  Liberty and freedom are not givens, nor does man own the Earth.  The Earth owns all its inhabitants.

 

In the testimony of one enslaved woman, earth is airth. Perhaps the visual sound of airth can help us to remember our intrusions in air and dirt, the dust of human presence. To remember also how exceptionally reluctant the human mind to assume ownership of guilt in the eyes of Nature. Man follows "the science" and denies the obvious.

 

Liberty and freedom are not givens which can inhabit body and mind. They can only be possessed at last when inevitable battles are fought and won.  Robert Hayden understood how crucial it was to transmit this knowledge to us in a tribute to Frederick Douglass.  We must not hesitate to transmit similar knowledge to future generations. That is a needful duty.

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                            6/18/2021 3:48:26 PM

 

 

 

 

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