When We Come To It
When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn and 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 identical plots in foreign soil
When we come to it, Then we will confess that not the pyramids with their stones set in mysterious perfection nor the gardens of babylon hanging as eternal beauty in our collective memory not the grand canyon kindled into delicious color by Western sunsets When we come to it, we this people on this minuscule and pithless globe who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger yet who petition in the dark for tokes of peace we this people on this mote of matter in the mouths abide cankerous words which challenge our very exisitence yet out of same mouths come songs of exquisite sweetness
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet whose hands can strike with such abandon that in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living yet those same hands can touch 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 nor divines
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet traveling through casual 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 learn a brave and startling truth
Words by; Maya Angelou
" We must confess"
Art Direction- Jai Pugh
Photography- Gioncarlo Valentine
