Poem inspired 'Pastime'
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"BLACKJACK"
1963
we march.
I look out remedial
white windowed essays
from Pasadena
I will read tonight
and there you are visiting
three black sisters
excluded from official parade
'their skins unlovely.'
Orange and Pair Oaks
to grow on
to the stadium
blocks where you stand
silent; I am silent --
Nodding I say
'47 high noon in the bleachers,
Cards in town,
you jog the outfield grass
lagging loose balls,
how you lofted their cream
skinned signatures
over the white heads
where we sat pigeontoed
circling their dugout,
how we carried your curled
name to our table
while your team cursed
your singed garters
on pennant flagged tongues.
As they saw nothing
but your teeth and eyes
we saw the jeering train
unwinding its sheets in
Georgia,
your mail cringing with snake
juice spat in the Bronx;
and when you crossed
our borders we cheered
our black ace
of the marked deck of Westwood,
the bowl we stand in,
the counter where their salted
nuts stack in their vacuum cans.
We will not speak of broad
jumps over tracks,
yardlines of pigskin
jaunted, stitched white balls
spiked at your skull:
we will remember the found
sleep and meals you lost
running over bases
their pitchers feared covering,
balls you made them eat
now flowering from your son's funeral car.
High blood pressure,
diabetes,
your eyes gone blind,
I will not answer. I steel home
at your back
down the red clay road
of their stadium
recalling Rachel,
my own daughter,
on deck.
"Did he say Blackie?"
my brother said of the white boy
in row G:
'Black Jack, the gamble's taken,
the debt unpaid,
and the answer,
answered, still to come.
From "Songlines in Michaeltree: New and Collected Poems." Copyright 2000 by Michael S. Harper. Used with permission of the poet and the University of Illinois Press.
First Published January 14, 2007 12:00 am
