CULTURAL EXCHANGE

In the
In the Quarter
In the Quarter of the Negroes
Where the doors are doors of paper
Dust of dingy atoms
Blows a scratchy sound.
Amorphous jack-o'-lanterns caper
and the wind won't wait for midnight
For fun to blow doors down.

By the river and the railroad
With fluid far-off going
Boundaries bind unbinding
A whirl of whistles blowing.
No trains or steamboats going--
Yet Leontyne's unpacking.

In the Quarter of the Negroes
Where the doorknob lets in Lieder
More than German every bore,
Her yesterday past grandpa--
Not of her own doing--
In a pot of collard greens
Is gently stewing.
In the pot behind the
paper doors on the old coal stove
What's cooking? What's smelling, Leontyne?
Lieder, lovely Lieder
And a leaf of collard green,
Lovely Lieder Leontyne.

But they asked me right at Christmas
if my blackness, would it rub off?
I said, ask your mama.

Dreams and nightmares . . .
Nightmares . . . Dreams! Oh!
Dreaming that the Negroes
Of the South have taken over--

Voted all the Dixiecrats
Right out of power--
Comes the COLORED HOUR:
Martin Luther King is Governor of Georgia,
Dr. Rufus Clement is his Chief Advisor,
Zelma Watson George the High Grand Worthy.
In white pillared mansions
Sitting on their wide verandas,
Wealthy Negroes have white servants,
White sharecroppers work the black plantations,
And colored children have white mammies:
     Mammy Faubus
     Mammy Eastland
     Mammy Talmadge
     Mammy Wallace.Dear, dear darling old white mammies--
Sometimes even buried with our family!
     Dear old
     Mammy Faubus!
Culture, they say, is a two-way street:
Hand me my mint julep, mammy.
     Hurry up!
     Make haste!

SONG FOR A DARK GIRL

Way Down South in Dixie
   (Break the heart of me)
They hung my black young lover
   To a cross roads tree.

Way Down South in Dixie
   (Bruised body high in air)
I asked the white Lord Jesus
   What was the use of prayer.

Way Down South in Dixie
   (Break the heart of me)
Love is a naked shadow
   On a gnarled and naked tree.