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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, 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. |
