The Propaganda of History

                                         For W. E. B. Du Bois

By Rudolph Lewis  

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, we're made mockery

& spit upon, degrading the eternal

mother; a sneer at human effort,

a mighty effort in a mighty century,

by aspiration and with art distorted:

a compromise with truth of 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 and power,

men who know want and 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

and 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

bodies of little children seed hills of memory.