HOMAGE TO LEROI JONES
For O.B.

And when you said I pleased you, I looked aside
at the hot town and the fearful grove on its orange plain;
here was an end of confusion, beginning of pride,
the present was born and the past had subtly died
and you were beside me in Spain.

When you said you loved me, I saw the future stand up
free and alive, but through the open window
the railroad tracks led into silence, a wild cup
of silence held the year whose fires would not stop
while the world lay under war-shadow.

When I left you, you stood on the pier and held
your face up and never smiled, saying what we had found
was a gift of the revolution — and the boat sailed
while for a moment my sons emerged and stood in the world
as a line of shadows that fell back in that ground.