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AND STARTLING TRUTH It was written by Maya Angelou, recited by her at the United Nations...... We, this people on a small and lonely planet Traveling through causal 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 discover 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 And allow the pure air to cool our palms 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 lie in identibal plots in foreign lands When the pennants are waving gaily When the banners of the world tremble Stoutly in the good, clean breeze When we come to it When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders And children dress their dolls in flags of truce When land mines of death have been removed And the aged may 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 about When we come to it Then we will confess that not the Pyramids With their stones set in mysterious perfection Not the Garden of Babylon Hanging as eternal beauty In our collective memory Not the Grand Canyon Kindled in delicious color By Western sunsets Not the Danube flowing in its blue soul into Europe Not the sacred peak of Mount Fugi stretching to the rising sun Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor Nurture all creaturs in the depths and on the shores These are not the only wonders of the world When we come to it We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade, the dagger Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace We, this people on this moat of matter in whose mouths abide cantakerous words Which challenge our 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 twinklin, life is sapped from the living Yet those same hands can tough 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 or divines When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body When we come to it We must confess that we are the possible We are the miraculous, the true wonders of this world That is when, and only when... WE COME TO IT! Go Back To Poet Page Directory Go To Freestyle Hip Hop Bulletin Board Go Back To Davey D's Home Page
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