Moments Without Proper Names (1987) - full transcript
(ominous music)
(bell ringing)
(ominous music)
- [Narrator] He was born
to a family of dirt farmers
in Fort Scott, Kansas, worked
as a bar room piano player,
waiter, cowboy, then Gordon
parks picked up a camera
and began to take photographs.
Changed his life.
International recognition as a
journalist for Life Magazine,
assignments from Paris to
Rio from the deep south
to the ghettos of Harlem.
First Black to direct
a major motion picture,
The Learning Tree, based
on the bestselling novel
he wrote about his childhood.
More novels, more films, poetry,
a piano concerto, a symphony, a ballet,
then motion picture scores.
All of it, the words,
the images, the music,
reflect the changing face of America
and within it, the hopes and
dreams, the joys and sorrows
and fears, and inevitably the solidarity
that binds us to each other.
(light music)
(typewriter clacking)
At times, especially in the
adolescence of my career,
I allowed my camera to
pass judgment upon people.
Without first taking
time to understand them.
I took refuge in the erroneous adage
that a photograph never lies.
Since then, I have learned that what a man
is, does not always show
on the face he wears.
Usually there's a deeper
truth submerged inside,
often imprisoned by his most
constant enemy, himself.
That truth, for better or
for worse, is sometimes
the most difficult to find.
So few of us manage to even
know ourselves in a lifetime.
Shifting from course to course,
we searched for a hunger
to keep us moving,
frightened of whatever it is that keeps us
so unsure of ourselves.
Finally, we fall exhausted.
Entangled in a bed of remarkable excuses
from which we are unable
to extricate ourselves.
The premise, the principle that will guide
this exploration is not
nostalgic remembrance
but neither is it Objective reporting.
These are fragments.
Moments remembered.
Several times I have crossed the world
and I remember each stone and spring,
each flower and century
dying with a kind of dying
even rivers can't escape.
I've been born again and again,
always finding something
or someone to love,
to win or lose, to mourn our celebrate.
Now, with life quieting down around me,
I look back through an orphaned mind,
searching the clear air
for the roots of things,
at what's growing are
expiring along the way.
Wherever my feet have taken
me, I have found both goodness
and pain and that's all I have to give.
I could depart with washed
hands, keeping the silence
and telling nothing but
I have no secret doors
to hide the memories.
♪ Where grows the learning tree ♪
♪ The rivers that flow and wind ♪
♪ Winds that blow ♪
♪ After sundown ♪
♪ That's what a boy ♪
♪ Should love ♪
♪ Fireflies and restless stars ♪
♪ In tall fields of corn ♪
♪ Where all june bugs ♪
♪ Are born ♪
♪ In the dew time ♪
I was born to this prairie,
to its shifting moods
and its wide emptiness and rugged beauty.
And when I was a boy out here,
I used to lie in this same
Indian grass and watch the
clouds race their shadows
across the hills and the valleys.
I know the coyote's howl
and the hawk's cry
and that river, a mile or so back,
used to cool my sunburned days.
I used it for looking glass sometimes,
and I ended it for
meandering off to places
that I thought I would never see.
Now, this prairie just sits here.
Waiting for something apart from the time
when wigwam smoke spiraled
up in its blue haze skies
and red men and white
men soaked this grass
red with one another's blood.
And those hard, cold winters,
they were brutal times on this prairie,
especially when food got low
and nothing was left hanging
on the hooks in the slaughter house.
When you got caught in a blizzard
and the wind driven
flakes felt in your face
until it was like frozen leather.
But tornado time was the worst.
The sky suddenly darkened
to a frightening stillness
that fell all over this
land, then the air cooled
and you look fearfully
toward the southwest
for that gray, black cloud.
And every living thing out here ate fear
of thunder, lightning and wind.
The rivers overran their
water sides, the bridges broke
and the roads washed out,
the power lines snapped
and we scrambled for the storm cellar.
(soft music)
And when the wind died and the sky paled
and it was clear that
the storm had passed,
we would climb out of the cellar
to watch it spinning on
toward the northeast,
fierce and beautiful as it went.
- I would miss this Kansas
land that I was leaving.
Wide prairie filled with
green and corn stalks,
of flowering apple,
tall elms and oaks beside
the glinting stream.
Rivers rolling quiet in
long summers of sleepy days
for fishing, for swimming,
for catching crawdad beneath the rock.
Cloud tufts billowing
across the round blue sky,
butterflies to chase through
grass high as the chin.
June bugs, swallowtails,
red robin and baba link.
Nights filled with soft laughter,
fireflies and restless stars.
The winding sounds of crickets
rubbing the dampness from their wings.
Silver September rain,
orange red brown Octobers
and white Decembers with
hungry smells of hams
and pork butts curing in the smoke house.
Yes.
All this I would miss
along with the fear,
the hatred and the violence we blacks
had suffered upon this beautiful land.
(train whistle blowing)
- When I reached there by the A train,
Harlem was fully alive.
A chill hung in the air
and the stoops were filling
with Negroes who stood warming in the sun.
I walked slowly down the
avenue, observing them.
They were gathered in
groups, their eyes sullen
against the morning light.
The mood seemed as ugly as their clothing
and they looked as if
promise had died inside them.
The sidewalks were filling
too, carrying a steady stream
of slow moving people in both directions
and soon I was lost in
the stream, clothing
by Ethel's Beauty Shop and Joe's Burgers
and a funeral home and a
church of God in Christ
and a church of good
hope and Smalls Paradise
and a funeral parlor and Harlem barbers
and Saturday night caskets
between the Black and Tan Bar
and Ebony Lounge and Pilgrim's
Baptist, shine, Mister?
Oh, they had cops on every corner
looking mean, daddy-o, lookin' mean.
Herbs, bibles candles,
pictures of Black Jesus,
Marty's Pawn Shop and Jog's Place.
Thievin' bastards, police, police!
(whistle blowing)
Police!
Sadie's Ball Gowns,
half price, dollar down,
dollar a week, The Dukes'
latest hit, come in, listen,
The Mooch, come on in, brother,
don't cost you nothing.
At African Methodist Episcopal Church
and Chick Webb at the Savoy.
♪ What a friend we have in Jesus ♪
Halt, halt, halt or I'll shoot!
And police brutality continues in Harlem.
Boy murdered, Negro group set for protest.
Get your paper here, read
all about it, brother.
Read all about it.
Ads, ads, ads, white waiter wanted.
Ads, ads, ads, white plumber needed.
Ads, ads, ads, white nurse wanted.
Ads, ads, white bartender needed.
Can you use me for any
kind of work, Mister?
Any kind, sweeping, dish
washing, window washing,
cook, any kind, Mister, any kind?
And to you, my friends,
throughout the land,
as your president, let
me assert my firm belief
that the only thing we have
to fear is fear itself.
Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror,
we are stricken by no plague of locusts.
Plenty is at our doorstep,
shine, Mister, shine?
Harlem socialites entertain
at the Savoy Ballroom
this weekend, dress formal.
(chuckling)
Ads, ads, ads,
Negro mate that can cook, sew, clean
and care for two month old baby.
Get your Amsterdam News,
your Pittsburgh Courier,
Chicago Defender here,
read your Black papers,
get the truth.
A Harlem socialite
caught in love triangle.
Police brutality on the
rise, wake up, Harlem!
Shine, Mister?
Mass rally at 125th Street
tonight, come one, come all.
Help bury police brutality,
high rent, bad housing,
starvation, help bury
Mr. Ofay tonight at seven
and there he was. Old Rastafarian, Old Ras
still up on his ladder
exhorting the people.
(chuckling)
Yes, man, yes, man,
come on in, come on in.
I have something to
tell you, man, come on.
Yes, come, get closer.
No, brothers, let me tell you
like it is here in Harlem.
All my Black friends who have
come to bury the white devil,
No, I'm going to tell you
something that nobody else
has had the guts to tell you
in front of these gun totin'
cops standing all around
you but no, no, no, no, no.
I ain't scared of none of them.
No matter how big that guns are.
The white man's day is coming to an end
and we, my friends, are
going to push that day along.
Yes, yes, we're gonna
run 'em out of Harlem
as sure as the African is
gonna run 'em out of Africa.
Mark my word, I am sick of
our children being shot down
in the streets like dogs by
these pasty faced bullies
with guns that they make you
buy with your own tax money.
Listen, you hear what I tell you?
I say, you pay for those
guns with your own tax money.
Wake up, brothers and sisters, wake up!
Hey, come on, move in closer, yes, man,
let my friends in here.
Yes, move in closer, gather
around me and hear the truth.
Like it's never been told before.
How long children, how long
will you allow these Ofay
bandits to suck your
life's blood like leeches?
Now, where are your so
called Black leaders?
Oh, my, tell me, come
on, brother, you know?
Tell me, where are your
so called Black leaders?
I'll tell you where they are.
They're out in Mr. Ofay's kitchen,
begging for a crust of mangy bread
and Mr. Ofay says,
"Yeah, nigga, yeah, come.
Now I gonna give you some
bread so you can keep all
the rest of these niggas
up in spooksville quiet."
(chuckling)
Yes, yes, yes, sir, yes, sir, Mr. Ofay,
yes, sir, Mr. Ofay, I
tell you, my friends,
I tell you, I tell you, I'll
watch over them, Mr. Ofay.
I tell you, you and me is
going to have to solve our own
problems, our own Black
hands, 'cause our leaders,
pardon my expression, ain't shit.
That's it, they ain't shit, right?
Right, right, right.
All we want is something to eat
and a decent place to sleep
and some good schools
educate our children.
Hell, brothers and sisters,
that's all we want, right?
But the Cotton Club's in Harlem.
So why can't a Black man go in there?
So the moon is cheese, daddy-o
and why can't you eat it?
(upbeat music)
- [Announcer] Ben Webster.
(saxophone playing)
- [Narrator] Jazz, according
to the Oxford Universal
Dictionary on Historical
Principles, is the kind of music
in syncopated time as
played by Negro bands
in the United States and music
is a fine art concerned
with the beauty of form
and the expression of thought and feeling.
Negro, also nigger, especially a male,
is one distinguished by
black skin, wooly hair,
flat nose and thick protruding lips.
Thus defined in this same eminent tome
edited by CT Onion, CBE, FBA
and other corresponding fellows
of the medieval academy of America.
Well, question not those
lettered fellows of Oxford.
Jazz, the meaning of it,
is as evasive as silence.
Name one who could accurately
define this passional art
that slices and churns
one's senses into so many
delicate barbarous and
uncomfortable patterns.
But alas, for me, one
definition would suffice.
Jazz, noun, Edward Kennedy Ellington.
Also known as Duke, Big Red, Monster,
Duke, Duke, Duke 'Em.
(jazz music)
- [Narrator] Ellington's my hero.
Unlike some Black Hollywood
stereotypes, he never grinned.
Ellington smiled.
He never shuffled.
He strode.
He was always, good evening,
ladies and gentlemen.
Never, how y'all doin'?
At his performances, we
young Blacks sat very high,
wanting the lights to see us,
to know that this handsome, elegant man
playing that beautiful,
sophisticated music was one of us.
(train whistle blowing)
- [Narrator] I found her in
a notary public's office.
I introduced myself.
She was a tall, spindly
woman with sharp features.
We started off awkwardly,
neither of us knowing
my reason for starting the conversation.
At first, it was a
meaningless exchange of words.
Then as if a dam had broken within her,
she began to spill out her life story.
It was a pitiful one.
She had struggled alone
after her mother had died
and her father had been
killed by a lynch mob.
She had gone through high school, married
and become pregnant.
Her husband was accidentally shot to death
two days before their daughter was born.
By the time the daughter
was 18, she had given birth
to two illegitimate
children, dying two weeks
after the second child's birth.
What's more, the first
child had been stricken
with paralysis a year
before its mother died.
Now this woman was bringing
up these grandchildren
on a salary, hardly
suitable for one person.
Can I photograph you?
The question had come out of
an elaboration of thoughts.
I was escaping the humiliation
of not being able to help.
She said,
"I don't mind."
(soft piano music)
- 38 years of racism had scratched me raw.
Europe was a change and a great relief.
Unlike Washington DC,
which had disappointed
me so, Europe was free of
bigotry and discrimination.
Traveling from Paris to our
house in the south of France
was far different from
motoring from Minneapolis
to Kansas City, where motel after motel
would refuse us lodging.
No stones had come through our window
when we moved into the
all white neighborhood.
There'd be no emotional
outpouring of welcome,
drastic calm and unquestioning acceptance.
No for white only signs,
no need for the weapon
I left back in Cherbu.
It was a new and enlightening experience.
I could never bring myself
to say I hated America.
I acknowledged her as a great country,
but without trembling at her greatness,
I damned her at times
and without allowing her
to consume me with bitterness.
The ironic thing about all
this is that no country
in the world offers a Black
the opportunities America does.
The sad thing is that
America makes it so difficult
for Blacks to take advantage
of those opportunities.
(speaking foreign language)
(camera lens shuttering)
(bell ringing)
I had chosen my camera as a
tool of social consciousness.
Common sense told me I
had to have sufficient
understanding of what was right or wrong.
Otherwise that camera could
eventually become my own enemy.
I tried to keep my own consciousness alert
and at the highest level of integrity.
To those things I would
be committing myself to.
The problem was clearly defined
from the very beginning.
It would be hard not to betray myself,
to remain faithful to
my emotions when facing
the controversial issues
of black and white.
I was a journalist first but
I would have to remain aware
that being true to my own
beliefs counted even more.
I would have to bear the
anguish of objectivity
and try to avoid those
intellectual biases that
subjectivity can impose upon a reporter.
I was a journalist and expected
to fulfill the commitment
as all journalists are supposed
to of emotional detachment.
The succeeding years would test my ability
to retain that detachment.
(shouting)
- [Dr. King] Sons of
former slaves and the sons
of former slave owners will
be able to sit down together
at the table of brotherhood,
I have a dream that one day
even the state of Mississippi,
a state sweltering
with the heat of injustice,
sweltering with the heat of oppression,
will be transformed
into an oasis of freedom
and justice, I have a dream today.
(audience cheering)
- Like stone, he sleeps.
His voice, relentless,
stretched out like a tiger
leaping over rooftop and mountain.
In noiseless ceremony, he sleeps.
His sword's edge, razor sharp with peace
and in every man's hand to
take proper care of the dream.
On and on he sleeps in majestic silence,
in slumbering combat,
his voice flowing time
like water, mustering the forces
from the furious quiet of his tomb.
Like a thunderous cord, that voice swells
and swells to excoriate the enemy.
- [Dr. King] When all of
God's children, Black men
and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics,
will be able to join hands
and sing in the words
of the old Negro spiritual, free at last,
free at last, thank God
almighty, we are free at last.
(audience cheering)
It was late.
I stood there to the
echoing of 100 years back.
Suddenly the southland darkness snapped
the whip against my grandfather's back.
Then clearly
I heard him splashing,
thrashing in the bayou swamp, his
torn feet slowly losing
distance between life
and 10 baying hounds.
For an eternity, it seemed,
I stood taking the measure
of the hangman's rope,
monitoring the stillness
or a Black widow's unanswered prayer
for the crackling of burning crosses,
or that sturdy oak limb
bending to dead nigger weight.
Star blinked in the north sky.
Fire in my stomach warned
me on, I had seen enough.
Remembered enough.
It struck me,
as I went that deep, decades deep,
beneath the furrows of
that moonlit cotton,
seeped enough Black blood
to paint all of Mississippi
a fiery red.
- How often have I heard
the white man suggest,
I know the Negro.
Nobody knows the Black
man, not even the Black man
because all our lives we
have cloaked our feelings,
bided our time, waited for
the hour when we could look
our oppressors squarely in the eye
and tell them exactly what we think,
what we want and intend to get.
And all this without fear.
Our young people tell us
boldly that they will not go on
suffering while the white man
insists on slow, surrender
through law and time.
Speak to them about new
laws and legislation.
They answer, it's one thing to make a law
and it's another thing to enforce it.
Speak to them about
well intentioned whites.
They answer, if they are
sincere, they will raise
their fists and voices
above those of the racists.
Remind them that times are changing.
They answer, we are changing the times.
My generation yields to them
and finds pride.
- [Narrator] I speak of a
hero with anger in his heart,
with fury in his fist
and terror in his sleep.
Who Muhammad Ali is, is what he is.
And that is as he would
say, exactly the way it is.
- I am you staring back
from a mirror of poverty
and despair, of revolt and freedom.
Look at me and know that to destroy me
is to destroy yourself.
You are weary of the long hot summers.
I am tired of the long hungered winters.
We're not so far apart as it might seem.
There is something about
both of us that goes deeper
than blood or black and white.
It is our common search for a
better life, a better world.
I march now over the same ground
that you once marched over.
- I fought for the same
things you still fight for.
My children's needs are the
same as your children's.
I too am America, America is me.
It gave me the only life I've ever known.
So I must share in its survival.
Look at me.
Listen to me.
Try to understand my
struggle against your racism.
Perhaps there is still a chance for us
to live in peace beneath
these restless skies.
- With that awful storm
passed, I sometimes think
of the Black revolution
as a great ship wrecked,
lying abandoned on some
peaceful shore being gnawed away
by the waves of time and
change, being looked upon
with contempt by those
of us who let it die.
The struggle against the
punishing white sea was fierce.
We saw our leaders, like
masts on a battered ship
snap under the waves of hatred.
In the end, it was slaughter,
fire and human carnage.
(soft music)
In this place where
all clocks have frozen,
these images without heartbeat stare at me
with their authority, piercing
me with their presence.
Here a boy thinks outside himself,
his mind slipping at the edges,
creeping toward a shoal of darkness.
There, a girl whom time has worn,
lies anguished on a withered hill,
pregnant with a summer full of secrets.
Both children of the forgetting day.
In these odd moments, love
gathered like butterflies
on soft beating wings,
puzzling moments understood
by only those who lived
them a heartbeat away from
some aging mistress voicing
her somber winter song.
Good moments, fragile as
lilies in their unsoundable
meanings and here these
instances of common folk
with faces that speak
of nothing special about
their terrible past that is not past.
Of those moments without
proper names where terror
is told in the wrinkled
faces and patched coats
of old men smothering slowly
inside the events of grander men.
In this place, I spent
a young widow's years,
stopping where her has
stopped, tending flowers
at his morning stone on
which her farewell reads--
(speaking foreign language)
There I last saw her in
black, glaring unforgivingly
at me from a landscape of crosses.
Now the pendulums swing again.
The wind sings over the
lowlands and morning birds pack
the eaves, twittering away the silence.
What will the children do?
They will wish to be alone.
Where will they go?
There will be ample space
in the places of old men
gone to sleep beneath
mountains of dry leaves
And there is room, lots of
room in the heartbroken houses
of young warriors, lying
faceless in distant mud fields.
Where a violent moment
froze them and left them
lying there under the black sky music.
The clocks are in motion.
Time is once more underway.
(typewriter clacking)
- My son, David Parks,
had looked out to where death
had overtaken the land of war
Where other frightened
young men awaited dawn
in the terrifying silence.
He admitted his fear
and I admired him for it.
He knew that the casualty list was growing
and that the piper was
hungry for more pay.
All we could do was wait.
To hope that this batch of
letters would not be his last.
- I return
the sub hero of a pirate victory.
A plunderer of God's precious time.
Betrayed by the enemy's
scorn for my awesome power.
I find that I am just a little warrior,
dipping a thimble into
a sea of blood and fear
where waves grow old and life is small
and death is no longer exquisite.
History has abandoned
me on this savage cliff
where those blinded gulls fly overhead,
wings, blood soaked with the
conflicts of 1,000 battles.
I realize now
that what happened was not for me.
I should have staved off
the compulsion to war
through such expendable days.
I would have better stayed home
to tend the cabbages and clip the roses
and drink the nectar of another spring.
Instead,
I took orders and hoisted
the banner of my empire
and I did as I was told
each hour, day and night.
That skull,
half buried,
there in the rubble,
and garnished with dead flowers.
That's not my doing.
My soul is garbed in white.
It sings innocence against all past anger.
It disclaims, oh scattered
cadavers upon that horizon.
They say the Holocaust is over now.
So wild death with its gargantuan hunger
is for the moment out of reach.
Let me fill this night with questions.
Whose end lies out there
in the silvery murk?
Where hides the victory
that holds up the parade?
Our souring wives, where are they?
And all the abandoned children,
is there no one left to
wave our ragged flag?
Come, talk with me.
Ask me the things that I have suffered.
Count the casualties
that I brought to one,
single barbarous day.
Praise the notches in my carbine stock.
Then at dawn,
let us limp off to pray.
- [Narrator] In helping one another,
we can ultimately save ourselves.
We must give up silent watching
and put our commitments into practice.
We need miracles now, I'm afraid.
If only we could understand
the needs of our past,
then perhaps we could
anticipate our future.
We cannot get too
comfortable in our houses.
Wolves still roam the woods.
The hawk still hangs in the
air and restless generals
still talk of death in their secret rooms.
("Yankee Doodle Dandy")
(dramatic music)
As for all of us ordinary
humans, for a long time,
I've entertained the impossibility
of putting each one of us
into a tiny room, or letting
us remain silent for a moment
and then separately speak the
absolute truth of ourselves.
Knowing the smallest lie could
hurl us into fiery space.
There we might realize
how common are needs are.
That hunger, hatred, and
love are the same wherever
we find them, that the Earth,
in relation to our time
upon it is hardly the
size of a grain of sand.
Perhaps then, in the
justice of understanding,
we could escape the
past that imprisons us.
(typewriter clacking)
- Certain people inhabit
the darker places,
breathing troubled air,
foraging rubbish for supper.
They say yes even before
accusation is put to them.
Since those who dare to say no are gone.
From sun up until day has vanished,
they tramp irrelevant distances,
moving aimlessly without sound,
singing music no one has until
the last they fall exhausted.
I watched these people from my house,
tormented by their coming
and going through hate,
through cold and impatient
days monitored by clocks
without hands or numbers.
The rope hangs from their necks.
I go from window to window, watching them
move in the shadows I moved in.
Remembering the darkness that once made
my world the size of a raisin.
My eyes and heart belong to that time.
I still see things in a
way that hunger taught me.
I feel now as fear instructed me to feel.
Asleep at the windows, watching,
waking now and then.
Knowing certain people
should never be left alone
even in their dreaming.
So that's what it amounts to.
Time moving on unwaveringly.
One snip of it is unattainable
even for one millisecond.
Relentlessly, it flows,
measuring our dreams
before they drop from sight,
like slow falling stars.
Idly, it wades, flowering love beds
and acres of mud soaked red with war.
Scorched with our pride and
fired with our preoccupations,
it marches with the triumph and tragedy
we manufacture for ourselves.
Immune to our best
intentions, it inches forward
day and night, authorizing our infirmities
and negotiating our
wrinkles, until at last,
we burn up like used
rags and curl into ashes,
without breath, sight or sound
and time sings on to
celebrate our silence.
After many snows, I was home again.
Time had whittled down to Merry Hills,
the great mountains of my childhood.
Raging rivers I once swam,
trickle now like gentle streams
and the wide road curving
on to China or Kansas city,
or perhaps Calcutta had
withered to a crooked path
of dust, ending abruptly at
the county burying ground.
Only the giant who was my
father remained the same.
100 strong men strained beneath his coffin
when they bore him to his grave.
(typewriter clacking)
(light music)
If I were an old man dying now,
I would tell of long cruel winters
and just as many cruel springs.
Of ages I have watched leaves turn brown
and back to green again.
Of time, sucking life from older men
and breathing despair into infants
and I would speak of summers lived through
the lash and sickened mobs
and I would speak long of a native soil
from which I was born to a hostile land
and my bent back gave order to that land
where I was told to pray and be saved
and where I prayed beneath broken flesh,
swinging Black from a south tree branch,
where I was told to love and conquer
and where I loved
but bowed to fear and hate.
And if I were an old man dying now,
I would tell him black jungles
where on asphalt metals,
smothered in violent summer smoke,
frozen under the hawk of long winter.
And there in the marked off area of life,
I did it each day in the garbage gardens
and climbed to fatherless rooms.
My hopes compressed
between the mean streets
and rooftops where the death peddle away.
The needle became my rainbow.
The needle fed my hungry arms that needed
and never stopped needing.
Knife and bullet formed my law
and plunged me into darker darkness.
Jesus, the kindler of my hopes was silent
and the last of my patience strained away
at the bottom of a stubborn winter.
And hung in the stillness left,
all I could hear was death
shivering through the noiseless wind
and if I were an old man
dying now, I would not speak
lightly of those perils my
sons may never have to suffer.
Too much was given in each encounter, one
that they, in their
time, escape such things.
Things to be remembered,
repeated and remembered
then passed on before
the candle flamed out,
where at a point that I should stop
in time and space and be no more.
There should begin a
brighter flame to burn
and mark the place where mine had ended.
Then the last flicker of me
could endure the approaching darkness.
(piano music)
What, I asked a wise man once, is beauty?
The sun was sinking, he
pointed westward saying,
"It is useless without valleys to fill."
Eastward, the moon was rising.
He pointed toward it saying,
"It is worthless without meadows to touch.
"Beauty is what beauty is wherever it is."
That was his answer.
I think back to Africa, far
out beyond the swamp trees,
remembering the beast,
black, velvet, black,
his eyes searching every leaf,
his tail curled against the jungle damp
and beauty was this leopard,
roaming, the cool green dark.
My memory curves to Capistrano,
where swallows dip, then shriek
out over the wrinkled sea
and Theroux's stained light
shimmering a silver cross
in the dark of an ancient cathedral,
where in towering moments,
God's men sing his prayers.
I recall a bridge of middle-aged
grace strung like a harp
across a river where
men of pleasure sailed
and other men worked the
fresh rock docks below,
craning their scrawny
necks, with eyes lifted,
to admire the dazzle of a summer sun,
strumming the spider web strings.
A gull's glorious height,
far above those odd voices.
Looking at you, I think of a
morning room outside Paris,
where in the summer
mirror, you lay reflected,
naked and gold in the nymph light,
your slenderness cradled
in the bosom of a dream.
Do you remember our old shuttered house
leaning indifferently
down toward the North Hill
and the last echelons of wild geese
flapping south through autumn wood smoke?
Speak to me of rainfalls at dusk
and how we walked, hushed, violet beds,
listening to the wing
brush of cicadas and dogs
complaining in the darkening trees.
Let your voice run clear as mountain water
and turn a spring gone black
to rose and green again.
(piano music)
I journeyed the troubled road
well into each shrunken evening,
letting the silence of darkness,
so cold in the unbroken spell
that turned me homeward with a shudder.
My memory worrying to the chill
of yet another morning on its way.
Then, upon one certain dusk,
upward through my window,
all was black, except a single star
of a striking light against that sill.
I slept deep that night.
The prairie is still in me,
in my talk and manners, I suspect.
I still sniff the air for rain or snow
and I know the loneliness of night.
I distrust the wind when
things get too quiet.
Having been away so long and
changed my face so often,
I sometimes suspect that
this place no longer
recognizes me despite
this cowboy boots and this
western hat and my father's
mustache that I wear.
It puzzles me that I live so far away from
this old clapboard house out here
where in the oak shade,
I used to sit and dream
of what I wanted to become.
I always returned here weary.
Or to draw strength from this
huge silence that surrounds
me, knowing now that
all I thought was dead
is still alive here
and that there is warmth here even when
the wind blows hard cold.
(soft music)
(bell ringing)
(ominous music)
- [Narrator] He was born
to a family of dirt farmers
in Fort Scott, Kansas, worked
as a bar room piano player,
waiter, cowboy, then Gordon
parks picked up a camera
and began to take photographs.
Changed his life.
International recognition as a
journalist for Life Magazine,
assignments from Paris to
Rio from the deep south
to the ghettos of Harlem.
First Black to direct
a major motion picture,
The Learning Tree, based
on the bestselling novel
he wrote about his childhood.
More novels, more films, poetry,
a piano concerto, a symphony, a ballet,
then motion picture scores.
All of it, the words,
the images, the music,
reflect the changing face of America
and within it, the hopes and
dreams, the joys and sorrows
and fears, and inevitably the solidarity
that binds us to each other.
(light music)
(typewriter clacking)
At times, especially in the
adolescence of my career,
I allowed my camera to
pass judgment upon people.
Without first taking
time to understand them.
I took refuge in the erroneous adage
that a photograph never lies.
Since then, I have learned that what a man
is, does not always show
on the face he wears.
Usually there's a deeper
truth submerged inside,
often imprisoned by his most
constant enemy, himself.
That truth, for better or
for worse, is sometimes
the most difficult to find.
So few of us manage to even
know ourselves in a lifetime.
Shifting from course to course,
we searched for a hunger
to keep us moving,
frightened of whatever it is that keeps us
so unsure of ourselves.
Finally, we fall exhausted.
Entangled in a bed of remarkable excuses
from which we are unable
to extricate ourselves.
The premise, the principle that will guide
this exploration is not
nostalgic remembrance
but neither is it Objective reporting.
These are fragments.
Moments remembered.
Several times I have crossed the world
and I remember each stone and spring,
each flower and century
dying with a kind of dying
even rivers can't escape.
I've been born again and again,
always finding something
or someone to love,
to win or lose, to mourn our celebrate.
Now, with life quieting down around me,
I look back through an orphaned mind,
searching the clear air
for the roots of things,
at what's growing are
expiring along the way.
Wherever my feet have taken
me, I have found both goodness
and pain and that's all I have to give.
I could depart with washed
hands, keeping the silence
and telling nothing but
I have no secret doors
to hide the memories.
♪ Where grows the learning tree ♪
♪ The rivers that flow and wind ♪
♪ Winds that blow ♪
♪ After sundown ♪
♪ That's what a boy ♪
♪ Should love ♪
♪ Fireflies and restless stars ♪
♪ In tall fields of corn ♪
♪ Where all june bugs ♪
♪ Are born ♪
♪ In the dew time ♪
I was born to this prairie,
to its shifting moods
and its wide emptiness and rugged beauty.
And when I was a boy out here,
I used to lie in this same
Indian grass and watch the
clouds race their shadows
across the hills and the valleys.
I know the coyote's howl
and the hawk's cry
and that river, a mile or so back,
used to cool my sunburned days.
I used it for looking glass sometimes,
and I ended it for
meandering off to places
that I thought I would never see.
Now, this prairie just sits here.
Waiting for something apart from the time
when wigwam smoke spiraled
up in its blue haze skies
and red men and white
men soaked this grass
red with one another's blood.
And those hard, cold winters,
they were brutal times on this prairie,
especially when food got low
and nothing was left hanging
on the hooks in the slaughter house.
When you got caught in a blizzard
and the wind driven
flakes felt in your face
until it was like frozen leather.
But tornado time was the worst.
The sky suddenly darkened
to a frightening stillness
that fell all over this
land, then the air cooled
and you look fearfully
toward the southwest
for that gray, black cloud.
And every living thing out here ate fear
of thunder, lightning and wind.
The rivers overran their
water sides, the bridges broke
and the roads washed out,
the power lines snapped
and we scrambled for the storm cellar.
(soft music)
And when the wind died and the sky paled
and it was clear that
the storm had passed,
we would climb out of the cellar
to watch it spinning on
toward the northeast,
fierce and beautiful as it went.
- I would miss this Kansas
land that I was leaving.
Wide prairie filled with
green and corn stalks,
of flowering apple,
tall elms and oaks beside
the glinting stream.
Rivers rolling quiet in
long summers of sleepy days
for fishing, for swimming,
for catching crawdad beneath the rock.
Cloud tufts billowing
across the round blue sky,
butterflies to chase through
grass high as the chin.
June bugs, swallowtails,
red robin and baba link.
Nights filled with soft laughter,
fireflies and restless stars.
The winding sounds of crickets
rubbing the dampness from their wings.
Silver September rain,
orange red brown Octobers
and white Decembers with
hungry smells of hams
and pork butts curing in the smoke house.
Yes.
All this I would miss
along with the fear,
the hatred and the violence we blacks
had suffered upon this beautiful land.
(train whistle blowing)
- When I reached there by the A train,
Harlem was fully alive.
A chill hung in the air
and the stoops were filling
with Negroes who stood warming in the sun.
I walked slowly down the
avenue, observing them.
They were gathered in
groups, their eyes sullen
against the morning light.
The mood seemed as ugly as their clothing
and they looked as if
promise had died inside them.
The sidewalks were filling
too, carrying a steady stream
of slow moving people in both directions
and soon I was lost in
the stream, clothing
by Ethel's Beauty Shop and Joe's Burgers
and a funeral home and a
church of God in Christ
and a church of good
hope and Smalls Paradise
and a funeral parlor and Harlem barbers
and Saturday night caskets
between the Black and Tan Bar
and Ebony Lounge and Pilgrim's
Baptist, shine, Mister?
Oh, they had cops on every corner
looking mean, daddy-o, lookin' mean.
Herbs, bibles candles,
pictures of Black Jesus,
Marty's Pawn Shop and Jog's Place.
Thievin' bastards, police, police!
(whistle blowing)
Police!
Sadie's Ball Gowns,
half price, dollar down,
dollar a week, The Dukes'
latest hit, come in, listen,
The Mooch, come on in, brother,
don't cost you nothing.
At African Methodist Episcopal Church
and Chick Webb at the Savoy.
♪ What a friend we have in Jesus ♪
Halt, halt, halt or I'll shoot!
And police brutality continues in Harlem.
Boy murdered, Negro group set for protest.
Get your paper here, read
all about it, brother.
Read all about it.
Ads, ads, ads, white waiter wanted.
Ads, ads, ads, white plumber needed.
Ads, ads, ads, white nurse wanted.
Ads, ads, white bartender needed.
Can you use me for any
kind of work, Mister?
Any kind, sweeping, dish
washing, window washing,
cook, any kind, Mister, any kind?
And to you, my friends,
throughout the land,
as your president, let
me assert my firm belief
that the only thing we have
to fear is fear itself.
Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror,
we are stricken by no plague of locusts.
Plenty is at our doorstep,
shine, Mister, shine?
Harlem socialites entertain
at the Savoy Ballroom
this weekend, dress formal.
(chuckling)
Ads, ads, ads,
Negro mate that can cook, sew, clean
and care for two month old baby.
Get your Amsterdam News,
your Pittsburgh Courier,
Chicago Defender here,
read your Black papers,
get the truth.
A Harlem socialite
caught in love triangle.
Police brutality on the
rise, wake up, Harlem!
Shine, Mister?
Mass rally at 125th Street
tonight, come one, come all.
Help bury police brutality,
high rent, bad housing,
starvation, help bury
Mr. Ofay tonight at seven
and there he was. Old Rastafarian, Old Ras
still up on his ladder
exhorting the people.
(chuckling)
Yes, man, yes, man,
come on in, come on in.
I have something to
tell you, man, come on.
Yes, come, get closer.
No, brothers, let me tell you
like it is here in Harlem.
All my Black friends who have
come to bury the white devil,
No, I'm going to tell you
something that nobody else
has had the guts to tell you
in front of these gun totin'
cops standing all around
you but no, no, no, no, no.
I ain't scared of none of them.
No matter how big that guns are.
The white man's day is coming to an end
and we, my friends, are
going to push that day along.
Yes, yes, we're gonna
run 'em out of Harlem
as sure as the African is
gonna run 'em out of Africa.
Mark my word, I am sick of
our children being shot down
in the streets like dogs by
these pasty faced bullies
with guns that they make you
buy with your own tax money.
Listen, you hear what I tell you?
I say, you pay for those
guns with your own tax money.
Wake up, brothers and sisters, wake up!
Hey, come on, move in closer, yes, man,
let my friends in here.
Yes, move in closer, gather
around me and hear the truth.
Like it's never been told before.
How long children, how long
will you allow these Ofay
bandits to suck your
life's blood like leeches?
Now, where are your so
called Black leaders?
Oh, my, tell me, come
on, brother, you know?
Tell me, where are your
so called Black leaders?
I'll tell you where they are.
They're out in Mr. Ofay's kitchen,
begging for a crust of mangy bread
and Mr. Ofay says,
"Yeah, nigga, yeah, come.
Now I gonna give you some
bread so you can keep all
the rest of these niggas
up in spooksville quiet."
(chuckling)
Yes, yes, yes, sir, yes, sir, Mr. Ofay,
yes, sir, Mr. Ofay, I
tell you, my friends,
I tell you, I tell you, I'll
watch over them, Mr. Ofay.
I tell you, you and me is
going to have to solve our own
problems, our own Black
hands, 'cause our leaders,
pardon my expression, ain't shit.
That's it, they ain't shit, right?
Right, right, right.
All we want is something to eat
and a decent place to sleep
and some good schools
educate our children.
Hell, brothers and sisters,
that's all we want, right?
But the Cotton Club's in Harlem.
So why can't a Black man go in there?
So the moon is cheese, daddy-o
and why can't you eat it?
(upbeat music)
- [Announcer] Ben Webster.
(saxophone playing)
- [Narrator] Jazz, according
to the Oxford Universal
Dictionary on Historical
Principles, is the kind of music
in syncopated time as
played by Negro bands
in the United States and music
is a fine art concerned
with the beauty of form
and the expression of thought and feeling.
Negro, also nigger, especially a male,
is one distinguished by
black skin, wooly hair,
flat nose and thick protruding lips.
Thus defined in this same eminent tome
edited by CT Onion, CBE, FBA
and other corresponding fellows
of the medieval academy of America.
Well, question not those
lettered fellows of Oxford.
Jazz, the meaning of it,
is as evasive as silence.
Name one who could accurately
define this passional art
that slices and churns
one's senses into so many
delicate barbarous and
uncomfortable patterns.
But alas, for me, one
definition would suffice.
Jazz, noun, Edward Kennedy Ellington.
Also known as Duke, Big Red, Monster,
Duke, Duke, Duke 'Em.
(jazz music)
- [Narrator] Ellington's my hero.
Unlike some Black Hollywood
stereotypes, he never grinned.
Ellington smiled.
He never shuffled.
He strode.
He was always, good evening,
ladies and gentlemen.
Never, how y'all doin'?
At his performances, we
young Blacks sat very high,
wanting the lights to see us,
to know that this handsome, elegant man
playing that beautiful,
sophisticated music was one of us.
(train whistle blowing)
- [Narrator] I found her in
a notary public's office.
I introduced myself.
She was a tall, spindly
woman with sharp features.
We started off awkwardly,
neither of us knowing
my reason for starting the conversation.
At first, it was a
meaningless exchange of words.
Then as if a dam had broken within her,
she began to spill out her life story.
It was a pitiful one.
She had struggled alone
after her mother had died
and her father had been
killed by a lynch mob.
She had gone through high school, married
and become pregnant.
Her husband was accidentally shot to death
two days before their daughter was born.
By the time the daughter
was 18, she had given birth
to two illegitimate
children, dying two weeks
after the second child's birth.
What's more, the first
child had been stricken
with paralysis a year
before its mother died.
Now this woman was bringing
up these grandchildren
on a salary, hardly
suitable for one person.
Can I photograph you?
The question had come out of
an elaboration of thoughts.
I was escaping the humiliation
of not being able to help.
She said,
"I don't mind."
(soft piano music)
- 38 years of racism had scratched me raw.
Europe was a change and a great relief.
Unlike Washington DC,
which had disappointed
me so, Europe was free of
bigotry and discrimination.
Traveling from Paris to our
house in the south of France
was far different from
motoring from Minneapolis
to Kansas City, where motel after motel
would refuse us lodging.
No stones had come through our window
when we moved into the
all white neighborhood.
There'd be no emotional
outpouring of welcome,
drastic calm and unquestioning acceptance.
No for white only signs,
no need for the weapon
I left back in Cherbu.
It was a new and enlightening experience.
I could never bring myself
to say I hated America.
I acknowledged her as a great country,
but without trembling at her greatness,
I damned her at times
and without allowing her
to consume me with bitterness.
The ironic thing about all
this is that no country
in the world offers a Black
the opportunities America does.
The sad thing is that
America makes it so difficult
for Blacks to take advantage
of those opportunities.
(speaking foreign language)
(camera lens shuttering)
(bell ringing)
I had chosen my camera as a
tool of social consciousness.
Common sense told me I
had to have sufficient
understanding of what was right or wrong.
Otherwise that camera could
eventually become my own enemy.
I tried to keep my own consciousness alert
and at the highest level of integrity.
To those things I would
be committing myself to.
The problem was clearly defined
from the very beginning.
It would be hard not to betray myself,
to remain faithful to
my emotions when facing
the controversial issues
of black and white.
I was a journalist first but
I would have to remain aware
that being true to my own
beliefs counted even more.
I would have to bear the
anguish of objectivity
and try to avoid those
intellectual biases that
subjectivity can impose upon a reporter.
I was a journalist and expected
to fulfill the commitment
as all journalists are supposed
to of emotional detachment.
The succeeding years would test my ability
to retain that detachment.
(shouting)
- [Dr. King] Sons of
former slaves and the sons
of former slave owners will
be able to sit down together
at the table of brotherhood,
I have a dream that one day
even the state of Mississippi,
a state sweltering
with the heat of injustice,
sweltering with the heat of oppression,
will be transformed
into an oasis of freedom
and justice, I have a dream today.
(audience cheering)
- Like stone, he sleeps.
His voice, relentless,
stretched out like a tiger
leaping over rooftop and mountain.
In noiseless ceremony, he sleeps.
His sword's edge, razor sharp with peace
and in every man's hand to
take proper care of the dream.
On and on he sleeps in majestic silence,
in slumbering combat,
his voice flowing time
like water, mustering the forces
from the furious quiet of his tomb.
Like a thunderous cord, that voice swells
and swells to excoriate the enemy.
- [Dr. King] When all of
God's children, Black men
and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics,
will be able to join hands
and sing in the words
of the old Negro spiritual, free at last,
free at last, thank God
almighty, we are free at last.
(audience cheering)
It was late.
I stood there to the
echoing of 100 years back.
Suddenly the southland darkness snapped
the whip against my grandfather's back.
Then clearly
I heard him splashing,
thrashing in the bayou swamp, his
torn feet slowly losing
distance between life
and 10 baying hounds.
For an eternity, it seemed,
I stood taking the measure
of the hangman's rope,
monitoring the stillness
or a Black widow's unanswered prayer
for the crackling of burning crosses,
or that sturdy oak limb
bending to dead nigger weight.
Star blinked in the north sky.
Fire in my stomach warned
me on, I had seen enough.
Remembered enough.
It struck me,
as I went that deep, decades deep,
beneath the furrows of
that moonlit cotton,
seeped enough Black blood
to paint all of Mississippi
a fiery red.
- How often have I heard
the white man suggest,
I know the Negro.
Nobody knows the Black
man, not even the Black man
because all our lives we
have cloaked our feelings,
bided our time, waited for
the hour when we could look
our oppressors squarely in the eye
and tell them exactly what we think,
what we want and intend to get.
And all this without fear.
Our young people tell us
boldly that they will not go on
suffering while the white man
insists on slow, surrender
through law and time.
Speak to them about new
laws and legislation.
They answer, it's one thing to make a law
and it's another thing to enforce it.
Speak to them about
well intentioned whites.
They answer, if they are
sincere, they will raise
their fists and voices
above those of the racists.
Remind them that times are changing.
They answer, we are changing the times.
My generation yields to them
and finds pride.
- [Narrator] I speak of a
hero with anger in his heart,
with fury in his fist
and terror in his sleep.
Who Muhammad Ali is, is what he is.
And that is as he would
say, exactly the way it is.
- I am you staring back
from a mirror of poverty
and despair, of revolt and freedom.
Look at me and know that to destroy me
is to destroy yourself.
You are weary of the long hot summers.
I am tired of the long hungered winters.
We're not so far apart as it might seem.
There is something about
both of us that goes deeper
than blood or black and white.
It is our common search for a
better life, a better world.
I march now over the same ground
that you once marched over.
- I fought for the same
things you still fight for.
My children's needs are the
same as your children's.
I too am America, America is me.
It gave me the only life I've ever known.
So I must share in its survival.
Look at me.
Listen to me.
Try to understand my
struggle against your racism.
Perhaps there is still a chance for us
to live in peace beneath
these restless skies.
- With that awful storm
passed, I sometimes think
of the Black revolution
as a great ship wrecked,
lying abandoned on some
peaceful shore being gnawed away
by the waves of time and
change, being looked upon
with contempt by those
of us who let it die.
The struggle against the
punishing white sea was fierce.
We saw our leaders, like
masts on a battered ship
snap under the waves of hatred.
In the end, it was slaughter,
fire and human carnage.
(soft music)
In this place where
all clocks have frozen,
these images without heartbeat stare at me
with their authority, piercing
me with their presence.
Here a boy thinks outside himself,
his mind slipping at the edges,
creeping toward a shoal of darkness.
There, a girl whom time has worn,
lies anguished on a withered hill,
pregnant with a summer full of secrets.
Both children of the forgetting day.
In these odd moments, love
gathered like butterflies
on soft beating wings,
puzzling moments understood
by only those who lived
them a heartbeat away from
some aging mistress voicing
her somber winter song.
Good moments, fragile as
lilies in their unsoundable
meanings and here these
instances of common folk
with faces that speak
of nothing special about
their terrible past that is not past.
Of those moments without
proper names where terror
is told in the wrinkled
faces and patched coats
of old men smothering slowly
inside the events of grander men.
In this place, I spent
a young widow's years,
stopping where her has
stopped, tending flowers
at his morning stone on
which her farewell reads--
(speaking foreign language)
There I last saw her in
black, glaring unforgivingly
at me from a landscape of crosses.
Now the pendulums swing again.
The wind sings over the
lowlands and morning birds pack
the eaves, twittering away the silence.
What will the children do?
They will wish to be alone.
Where will they go?
There will be ample space
in the places of old men
gone to sleep beneath
mountains of dry leaves
And there is room, lots of
room in the heartbroken houses
of young warriors, lying
faceless in distant mud fields.
Where a violent moment
froze them and left them
lying there under the black sky music.
The clocks are in motion.
Time is once more underway.
(typewriter clacking)
- My son, David Parks,
had looked out to where death
had overtaken the land of war
Where other frightened
young men awaited dawn
in the terrifying silence.
He admitted his fear
and I admired him for it.
He knew that the casualty list was growing
and that the piper was
hungry for more pay.
All we could do was wait.
To hope that this batch of
letters would not be his last.
- I return
the sub hero of a pirate victory.
A plunderer of God's precious time.
Betrayed by the enemy's
scorn for my awesome power.
I find that I am just a little warrior,
dipping a thimble into
a sea of blood and fear
where waves grow old and life is small
and death is no longer exquisite.
History has abandoned
me on this savage cliff
where those blinded gulls fly overhead,
wings, blood soaked with the
conflicts of 1,000 battles.
I realize now
that what happened was not for me.
I should have staved off
the compulsion to war
through such expendable days.
I would have better stayed home
to tend the cabbages and clip the roses
and drink the nectar of another spring.
Instead,
I took orders and hoisted
the banner of my empire
and I did as I was told
each hour, day and night.
That skull,
half buried,
there in the rubble,
and garnished with dead flowers.
That's not my doing.
My soul is garbed in white.
It sings innocence against all past anger.
It disclaims, oh scattered
cadavers upon that horizon.
They say the Holocaust is over now.
So wild death with its gargantuan hunger
is for the moment out of reach.
Let me fill this night with questions.
Whose end lies out there
in the silvery murk?
Where hides the victory
that holds up the parade?
Our souring wives, where are they?
And all the abandoned children,
is there no one left to
wave our ragged flag?
Come, talk with me.
Ask me the things that I have suffered.
Count the casualties
that I brought to one,
single barbarous day.
Praise the notches in my carbine stock.
Then at dawn,
let us limp off to pray.
- [Narrator] In helping one another,
we can ultimately save ourselves.
We must give up silent watching
and put our commitments into practice.
We need miracles now, I'm afraid.
If only we could understand
the needs of our past,
then perhaps we could
anticipate our future.
We cannot get too
comfortable in our houses.
Wolves still roam the woods.
The hawk still hangs in the
air and restless generals
still talk of death in their secret rooms.
("Yankee Doodle Dandy")
(dramatic music)
As for all of us ordinary
humans, for a long time,
I've entertained the impossibility
of putting each one of us
into a tiny room, or letting
us remain silent for a moment
and then separately speak the
absolute truth of ourselves.
Knowing the smallest lie could
hurl us into fiery space.
There we might realize
how common are needs are.
That hunger, hatred, and
love are the same wherever
we find them, that the Earth,
in relation to our time
upon it is hardly the
size of a grain of sand.
Perhaps then, in the
justice of understanding,
we could escape the
past that imprisons us.
(typewriter clacking)
- Certain people inhabit
the darker places,
breathing troubled air,
foraging rubbish for supper.
They say yes even before
accusation is put to them.
Since those who dare to say no are gone.
From sun up until day has vanished,
they tramp irrelevant distances,
moving aimlessly without sound,
singing music no one has until
the last they fall exhausted.
I watched these people from my house,
tormented by their coming
and going through hate,
through cold and impatient
days monitored by clocks
without hands or numbers.
The rope hangs from their necks.
I go from window to window, watching them
move in the shadows I moved in.
Remembering the darkness that once made
my world the size of a raisin.
My eyes and heart belong to that time.
I still see things in a
way that hunger taught me.
I feel now as fear instructed me to feel.
Asleep at the windows, watching,
waking now and then.
Knowing certain people
should never be left alone
even in their dreaming.
So that's what it amounts to.
Time moving on unwaveringly.
One snip of it is unattainable
even for one millisecond.
Relentlessly, it flows,
measuring our dreams
before they drop from sight,
like slow falling stars.
Idly, it wades, flowering love beds
and acres of mud soaked red with war.
Scorched with our pride and
fired with our preoccupations,
it marches with the triumph and tragedy
we manufacture for ourselves.
Immune to our best
intentions, it inches forward
day and night, authorizing our infirmities
and negotiating our
wrinkles, until at last,
we burn up like used
rags and curl into ashes,
without breath, sight or sound
and time sings on to
celebrate our silence.
After many snows, I was home again.
Time had whittled down to Merry Hills,
the great mountains of my childhood.
Raging rivers I once swam,
trickle now like gentle streams
and the wide road curving
on to China or Kansas city,
or perhaps Calcutta had
withered to a crooked path
of dust, ending abruptly at
the county burying ground.
Only the giant who was my
father remained the same.
100 strong men strained beneath his coffin
when they bore him to his grave.
(typewriter clacking)
(light music)
If I were an old man dying now,
I would tell of long cruel winters
and just as many cruel springs.
Of ages I have watched leaves turn brown
and back to green again.
Of time, sucking life from older men
and breathing despair into infants
and I would speak of summers lived through
the lash and sickened mobs
and I would speak long of a native soil
from which I was born to a hostile land
and my bent back gave order to that land
where I was told to pray and be saved
and where I prayed beneath broken flesh,
swinging Black from a south tree branch,
where I was told to love and conquer
and where I loved
but bowed to fear and hate.
And if I were an old man dying now,
I would tell him black jungles
where on asphalt metals,
smothered in violent summer smoke,
frozen under the hawk of long winter.
And there in the marked off area of life,
I did it each day in the garbage gardens
and climbed to fatherless rooms.
My hopes compressed
between the mean streets
and rooftops where the death peddle away.
The needle became my rainbow.
The needle fed my hungry arms that needed
and never stopped needing.
Knife and bullet formed my law
and plunged me into darker darkness.
Jesus, the kindler of my hopes was silent
and the last of my patience strained away
at the bottom of a stubborn winter.
And hung in the stillness left,
all I could hear was death
shivering through the noiseless wind
and if I were an old man
dying now, I would not speak
lightly of those perils my
sons may never have to suffer.
Too much was given in each encounter, one
that they, in their
time, escape such things.
Things to be remembered,
repeated and remembered
then passed on before
the candle flamed out,
where at a point that I should stop
in time and space and be no more.
There should begin a
brighter flame to burn
and mark the place where mine had ended.
Then the last flicker of me
could endure the approaching darkness.
(piano music)
What, I asked a wise man once, is beauty?
The sun was sinking, he
pointed westward saying,
"It is useless without valleys to fill."
Eastward, the moon was rising.
He pointed toward it saying,
"It is worthless without meadows to touch.
"Beauty is what beauty is wherever it is."
That was his answer.
I think back to Africa, far
out beyond the swamp trees,
remembering the beast,
black, velvet, black,
his eyes searching every leaf,
his tail curled against the jungle damp
and beauty was this leopard,
roaming, the cool green dark.
My memory curves to Capistrano,
where swallows dip, then shriek
out over the wrinkled sea
and Theroux's stained light
shimmering a silver cross
in the dark of an ancient cathedral,
where in towering moments,
God's men sing his prayers.
I recall a bridge of middle-aged
grace strung like a harp
across a river where
men of pleasure sailed
and other men worked the
fresh rock docks below,
craning their scrawny
necks, with eyes lifted,
to admire the dazzle of a summer sun,
strumming the spider web strings.
A gull's glorious height,
far above those odd voices.
Looking at you, I think of a
morning room outside Paris,
where in the summer
mirror, you lay reflected,
naked and gold in the nymph light,
your slenderness cradled
in the bosom of a dream.
Do you remember our old shuttered house
leaning indifferently
down toward the North Hill
and the last echelons of wild geese
flapping south through autumn wood smoke?
Speak to me of rainfalls at dusk
and how we walked, hushed, violet beds,
listening to the wing
brush of cicadas and dogs
complaining in the darkening trees.
Let your voice run clear as mountain water
and turn a spring gone black
to rose and green again.
(piano music)
I journeyed the troubled road
well into each shrunken evening,
letting the silence of darkness,
so cold in the unbroken spell
that turned me homeward with a shudder.
My memory worrying to the chill
of yet another morning on its way.
Then, upon one certain dusk,
upward through my window,
all was black, except a single star
of a striking light against that sill.
I slept deep that night.
The prairie is still in me,
in my talk and manners, I suspect.
I still sniff the air for rain or snow
and I know the loneliness of night.
I distrust the wind when
things get too quiet.
Having been away so long and
changed my face so often,
I sometimes suspect that
this place no longer
recognizes me despite
this cowboy boots and this
western hat and my father's
mustache that I wear.
It puzzles me that I live so far away from
this old clapboard house out here
where in the oak shade,
I used to sit and dream
of what I wanted to become.
I always returned here weary.
Or to draw strength from this
huge silence that surrounds
me, knowing now that
all I thought was dead
is still alive here
and that there is warmth here even when
the wind blows hard cold.
(soft music)