Celebrations: Rituals of Peace and Prayer
Maya Angelou
Copyright © 2006 by Maya Angelou
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM House and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
THE FOLLOWING POEMS HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED:
“On the Pulse of Morning,” “A Brave and Startling Truth,”
“When Great Trees Fall,” “Amazing Peace,” and “Mother.”
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Angelou, Maya.
Celebrations: rituals of peace and prayer / Maya Angelou.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-77792-8
I. Title
PS3551.N464C45 2006
811′.54—dc22 2006048645
www.atrandom.com
v3.1
C O N T E N T S
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
On the Pulse of Morning
A Brave and Startling Truth
Continue
Sons and Daughters
When Great Trees Fall
A Black Woman Speaks to Black Manhood
Amazing Peace
Mother: A Cradle to Hold Me
In and Out of Time
Ben Lear’s Bar Mitzvah
Vigil
Prayer
Dedication
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
ON THE PULSE
OF MORNING
A Rock, a River, a Tree,
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor.
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my back
And face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance,
Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made, proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,
Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.
The River sings and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The Privileged, the Homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.
Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.
Each of you, descendant of some
Passed-on traveler, has been paid for.
You who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache, and Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then,
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other seekers—desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.
You the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Italian, the Scot,
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought,
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare,
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours—your Passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day,
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up, and out
And into your sister’s eyes, into
Your brother’s face, your country,
And say simply,
Very simply,
With hope,
Good morning.
A BRAVE AND
STARTLING TRUTH
Dedicated to the hope for peace, which lies,
sometimes hidden, in every heart.
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth.
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lay them in identical plots in foreign soil
When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennan
ts are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in a good, clean breeze
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And our children can dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of sexual abuse
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother
Mississippi
who, without favor,
Nurtures all creatures in their depths and on their shores
These are not the only wonders of the world
When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade, and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people, on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Can come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That, in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing,
irresistible tenderness,
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, we are the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when,
We come to it.
CONTINUE
ON THE OCCASION OF OPRAH WINFREY’S
FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY
Dear Oprah,
On the day of your birth
The Creator filled countless storehouses and stockings
With rich ointments
Luscious tapestries
And antique coins of incredible value
Jewels worthy of a queen’s dowry
They were set aside for your use
Alone
Armed with faith and hope
And without knowing of the wealth which awaited
You broke through dense walls
Of poverty
And loosed the chains of ignorance which threatened to cripple you so that you could walk
A free woman
Into a world which needed you
My wish for you
Is that you continue
Continue
To be who and how you are
To astonish a mean world
With your acts of kindness
Continue
To allow humor to lighten the burden
Of your tender heart
Continue
In a society dark with cruelty
To let the people hear the grandeur
Of God in the peals of your laughter
Continue
To let your eloquence
Elevate the people to heights
They had only imagined
Continue
To remind the people that
Each is as good as the other
And that no one is beneath
Nor above you
Continue
To remember your own young years
And look with favor upon the lost
And the least and the lonely
Continue
To put the mantel of your protection
Around the bodies of
The young and defenseless
Continue
To take the hand of the despised
And diseased and walk proudly with them
In the high street
Some might see you and
Be encouraged to do likewise
Continue
To plant a public kiss of concern
On the cheek of the sick
And the aged and infirm
And count that as a
Natural action to be expected
Continue
To let gratitude be the pillow
Upon which you kneel to
Say your nightly prayer
And let faith be the bridge
You build to overcome evil
And welcome good
Continue
To ignore no vision
Which comes to enlarge your range
And increase your spirit
Continue
To dare to love deeply
And risk everything
For the good thing
Continue
To float
Happily in the sea of infinite substance
Which set aside riches for you
Before you had a name
Continue
And by doing so
You and your work
Will be able to continue
Eternally
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
SONS AND
DAUGHTERS
WRITTEN FOR THE
CHILDREN’S DEFENSE FUND
If my luck is bad
And his aim is straight
I will leave my life
On the killing field
You can see me die
On the nightly news
As you settle down
To your evening meal.
But you’ll turn your back
As you often do
Yet I am your sons
And your daughters too.
In the city streets
Where the neon lights
Turn my skin from black
To electric blue
My hope soaks red
On the gray pavement
And my dreams die hard
For my life is through.
But you’ll turn your back
As you often do
Yet I am your sons
And your daughters too.
In the little towns
Of this mighty land
Where you close your eyes
To my crying need
I strike out wild
And my brother falls
Turn on your news
You can watch us bleed.
In morgues I’m known
By a numbered tag
In clinics and jails
And junkyards too
You deny my kin
Though I bear your name
For I am a part
Of mankind too.
But you’ll turn your back
As you often do
Yet I am your sons
And your daughters too.
Turn your face to me
; Please
Let your eyes seek my eyes
Lay your hand upon my arm
Touch me. I am real as flesh
And solid as bone.
I am no metaphor
I am no symbol
I am not a nightmare
To vanish with the dawn
I am lasting as hunger
And certain as midnight.
I claim that no council nor committee
Can contain me
Nor fashion me to its whim.
You, come here, hunch with me in this dingy doorway,
Face with me the twisted mouth threat
Of one more desperate
And better armed than I.
Join me again at today’s dime store counter
Where the word to me
Is still no.
Let us go, your shoulder,
Against my shoulder,
To the new picket line
Where my color is still a signal
For brutes to spew their bile
Like spit in my eye.
You, only you, who have made me
Who share this tender taunting history with me
My fathers and mothers
Only you can save me
Only you can order the tides,
That rush my heart, to cease
Stop expanding my veins
Into red riverlets.
Come, you my relative
Walk the forest floor with me
Where rampaging animals lurk,
Lusting for my future
Only if your side is by my side
Only if your side is by my side
Will I survive.
But you’ll probably turn your back
As you often do
Yet I am your sons
And your daughters too.
WHEN GREAT
TREES FALL
Dedicated to Bernice Johnson Reagon
of Sweet Honey in the Rock
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
