On Martin Luther King’s Day, I’d like to share this poem, which I have shared before but which I find so striking not only for its beauty but also for its essence of simplicity.
If things could only be this way!
And yet, there is no reason why hope cannot let us see that daybreak in Alabama, know that the next few weeks and months can be of grandeur and not of dread, because we will all be working together as one…
© Ana M. Fores Tamayo
Daybreak in Alabama
by Langston Hughes
When I get to be a composer
I’m gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I’m gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.
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