The dreams of young men

I am continuing with opening a random page in the book, and reading a poem on that page or on a page near that.

What prevents me from going sequentially from page 1 on is a question for which I have no answer.  If a text does not require me to read pages in sequence, then almost always I jump around.  When this approach has worked well for me all these years, why would I want to change things now, eh!

When reading the poems by African-Americans, I feel an emotional difference--these issues do not hit me as hard as they used to over the past four years.  "I can't breathe" seemed to be the motif during the dark era between November 8, 2016 and January 6, 2021, even though that phrase itself became a rallying cry only in spring and summer of 2021.

I hope that the urgency of the horror of anti-blackness will not ease up just because we are no longer governed by a sociopath and his toadies.  After all, as Charles Blow notes: "Racism is everywhere — it's just about what kind of racism you can live with."

Blow pays special attention to the role of elders in the community as he discusses how the original Great Migration caused a "loss of generational connectedness as an entire young generation left and the South became more of aged society," adversely affecting both young people and the elders. Here, Blow crafts an homage to the of elders in the Black community — from the great-uncle who babysat him to the importance of the example of elders like the 100 year-old Tim Black of Chicago who mentored a young Barack Obama newly arrived to Chicago.

We need to make big gains and fast before yet another generation grows old and see their bubbles burst in air.

Old Black Men
By Georgia Douglas Johnson

They have dreamed as young men dream
Of glory, love and power;
They have hoped as youth will hope
Of life’s sun-minted hour.

They have seen as other saw
Their bubbles burst in air,
And they have learned to live it down
As though they did not care.