I'm very pleased--
I'm very pleased to be back in Tucson.
I feel at home here.
I've been here-- I think this might be the fourth time.
And just like anybody who's been away and comes back to home,
there are so many things I want to tell you.
What I've been doing--
you don't know what I've been doing.
What's been going on--
I tend to not know what I'm going to read,
but there are some poems that I think so.
And also I have some new poems I haven't heard very much.
And so I want to hear them.
I am reminded by what happened with the mic--
I don't know if this is working or not.
But I was at a conference at Princeton University one time,
and it was a conference on--
the theme was something like "Whatever
Happened to the Soul?"
I was the only poet there.
I was the only person of color.
I mean, it's a redundant question to me--
whatever happened to the soul?
But beside all that, we were waiting
for a very well known writer, who
has written a lot about the gospel
and the Gnostic tradition and all of that.
And she came late, so that annoyed everybody.
And then, when she came, the mic wasn't working.
And so the audience was pretty much clergy--
clergy and clergy types.
And what was interesting to me--
what was interesting to me was that when the mic wouldn't
work, everybody was frazzled.
(IMITATING AUDIENCE) "You've got to talk louder, come on now!"
These are nuns and things getting attitudes.
And what was interesting to me, when I stood up, was--
I said when we're talking about, "Whatever
Happened to the Soul?"--
we've just failed the first test.
Because according to the Biblical tradition,
it is said be still and know that I am God--
is that right?
And everybody here was wanting the speaker
to speak louder, harder.
And nobody was willing to listen harder and louder.
Isn't that odd?
I just want to tell you what was odd.
Now, I would like to start with a poem written
by a lady who was a great woman and a great poet.
I like to think that somewhere in-- if there is a heaven--
somewhere there-- in the last month or so, somebody did
a Mickey Rooney thing--
let's have a show.
So they called Esther Rolle.
And then they call Flip Wilson.
And then, on Monday, they said we've
got to have somebody write this thing.
So they called Margaret Walker, who died on Monday.
And I would like to read three sections of Margaret Walker's
wonderful poem, "For My People."
Honor to Margaret Walker.
"For my people everywhere singing their slave
songs repeatedly; their dirges and their ditties
and their blues and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly
to an unknown god, bending their knees humbly
to an unseen power--
for my people standing staring trying to fashion a better
way from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,
trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people, all
the faces, all the adams and eves
and their countless generations; let a new earth rise.
Let another world be born.
Let a bloody peace be written in the sky.
Let a second generation full of courage issue forth;
let a people loving freedom come to growth.
Let a beauty full of healing and a strength of final clenching
be the pulsing in our spirit and our blood.
Let the martial songs be written,
let the dirges disappear.
Let a race of men now rise and take control."
-- Margaret Walker, rest in peace.