Day

March 2, 2021

Burn our land, burn our dreams

pour acid onto our songs

cover with sawdust

the blood of our massacred people

muffle with your technology

the screams of all that is free, wild and indigenous.

Destroy, destroy our grass and soil

raze to the ground every farm and every village

our ancestors had build

every tree, every home, every book, every law,

and all the equity and harmony.

Flatten with your bombs every valley;

erase with your edits our past,

our literature, our metaphor.

Denude the forests and the earth

‘til no insect, no bird, no word can find a place to hide.

Do that and more.

I do not fear your tyranny.

I do not despair ever

for I guard one seed

a little live seed that I shall safeguard and plant again.

-Palestinian Poem

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

– Maya Angelou