For you who have huddled beneath

cardboard clouds of cheerless midnight,

your heart pulled taut like a fisherman’s net

overstuffed with creatures of the good,

with creatures of beauty and of neverfading evil,

in honor of you I step through life

as if through a field of sleeping gods

picking from the garden of their dreamers’ bliss

a bouquet of light to color and feed your immortal light.

How long have your words run

like white stallions charged with black lightning

through the desert of my fears and prayers?

And when did the kindness of your voice

seduce and bless the meekness of my voice?

I was born a pilgrim damned by namelessness

And gifted with blindness until you

bathed my heart in a holocaust

of love and a firestorm of vision.

To you who weaned yourselves of half-penny passions

and took in your arms the fury of life’s glory

and joy’s betrayals, who held at your breasts

the lips of those starving for your death:

To the shattered heart of Jalaluddin Rumi

   teaching time how to dance and oceans how to weep,

To the trembling hands of Walt Whitman

   glowing with America and feverish with courage,

To the mystical passion of Jean Toomer

   black as Africa and blue as eternity,

To the warrior-woman throat of Gwendolyn Brooks

   sweet horn of plenty still tumbling walls,

To the unchained soul of Pablo Neruda

   riding hurricanes over despair’s bullshit dictators,

To the JuJu-spirit eyes of James Baldwin

   and the saxophone bones of Billie Holiday,

To the Buddha-child laughter of Jack Kerouac

   and the rose-perfumed miseries of Jean Genet.

To each of you in future hours and present tense

warming the dark with your spiritual naked Self–

worshippers of women and caressers of men,

Beholders of God and guardians of my madness

did I tell you I was born a pilgrim? I was

damned by namelessness and gifted with blindness

until you bathed my heart in a holocaust

of love and a firestorm of vision.