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I like to feel that having
been writing all my life,

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I have written a lot of
different kinds of poems.

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I like to feel free to
have a certain range.

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And I'm going to read next a
rather different kind of poem.

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I don't feel that
poems, my poems,

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anyway fall into a really
marked off categories.

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They don't feel to
me as if they do.

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They seem to me to come
out of the same sources

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and to be written initially
because I need to write them

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and part of my need to
write because I have always

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been interested in
the art of poetry

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is the need to make things,
which can stand free of me

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when made.

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But the same needs
to define my own,

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to discover what I feel by
saying it, and to make things,

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can produce, at different
times, very different styles

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of poetry.

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And this one, I
think you'll agree,

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is rather different
from what I just read.

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It's one of a number
of poems which

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have dates attached
to them, really,

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as part of their titles.

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This one is called "The Day
the Audience Walked Out on Me

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and Why."

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And it's dated May 8, 1970,
Goucher College, Maryland,

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which was the day before
one of the big Washington

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demonstrations.

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"Like this it happened.

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After the antiphonal
reading from the Psalms

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and the dance of lamentation
before the altar and the two

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poems, Life at War and What
Were They Like, I began my rap

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and said, yes, it is well that
we have gathered in this chapel

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to remember the students
shot at Kent State.

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But let us be sure we know
our gathering is a mockery

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unless we remember also
the Black students shot

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at Orangeburg two years ago
and Fred Hampton murdered

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in his bed by the
police only months ago.

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And while I spoke, the people,
girls, older women, a few men,

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began to rise and turn their
backs to the altar and leave.

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And I went on and
said, yes, it is well

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that we remember all of these.

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But let us be sure we know
it is hypocrisy to think

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of them unless we
make our actions

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their memorial, actions
of militant resistance.

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By then, the pews
were almost empty.

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And I returned to
my seat and a man

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stood up in the back
of the quiet chapel,

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near the wide open doors through
which the green of May showed

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and the long shadows
of late afternoon.

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And said my words
desecrated a holy place.

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And a few days later, when
some more students, Black,

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was shot at Jackson,
Mississippi,

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no one desecrated the
white folks' chapel

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because no memorial
service was held."

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