Robert Hayden (1913 – 1980)
Born Asa Bundy Sheffey, was an American poet, essayist, and educator.
Page 1 of 1
Oh who and oh who will sing Jesus down
to help with struggling and doing without and being colored
all through blue Monday?
Till way next Sunday?
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
This man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered.
Standing to America, bringing home
black gold, black ivory, black seed.
Page 1 of 1