Root Song

                            for Daki

                         By Melvin E. Brown

In us and through us forever

There are native sons living

And we must always touch their origins

For they give us a pulse that reminds us

of the strangers in our bone.

In us and thru us forever

There are future black selves

And we must always touch their origins

For they give us the word that informs us

Of the strangers in our tongue.

Against whole centuries of blood dripping skies

Against the rape and burning flesh and twisted sinew

Against today's murder and oppression and indignities

While we struggle we must never forget that

In us and thru us forever

There are african spirits moving

And we must always touch their origins

For they give us heart that beats for the lives

That are so unfamiliar and so exalted.

Melvin E. Brown was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, Brown received his M.A. in 1977 to 1981. He was the editor of Chicory Magazine, a publication of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. He has also been a faculty member at Sojourner Douglass College. His first volume of poetry In the First Place was published in 1974. Most recently, his poetry appeared in In Search of Color Everywhere: A Collection of African American Poetry.

Blue Notes & Blessing Songs
 (Liberation House,1995)

Reviews

Melvin follows the tradition: griot, storyteller, musician. His poems are straight, clear thinking. In the words of Etheridge Knight, he too "sees through stone." Celebrate this new good book.

--Lucille Clifton, Pulitzer Prize Nominee, author of The Book of Light

Ooh, baby, baby--Melvin E. Brown, at times, writes the way Smokey Robinson once sang. Brown's latest volume is a book of remembrances. It's a collection of poems "coated" with the blues and filled with a special kind of love.

--E. Ethelbert Miller, Director, African American Resource Center, Howard University

It ain't just poetry to me. I hear the codes for honest living, the quest to become a better human being. I hear the love of friendship and memory, and the love of memorable friendships. I feel the caring, the hurting, the loving, the healing, the hoping. It's the heart-to-heart that's really got a hold on me. Unh, unh, it ain't just poetry to me.

--Peter J. Harris, author of Hand Me My Griot Clothes: The Autobiography of Junior Baby