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 ever bore,
Her yesterday past grandpa-
Not of her own doing-
In a pot of collard greens
Is gently stewing.

There, forbid us to remember,
Comes an African in mid-december
Sent by the state department
Among the shacks to meet the blacks:
Leontyne Sammy Harry Poitier
Lovely Lena Marian Louis Pearlie Mae

George S. Schuyler Molto Bene
Come What May Langston Hughes
In the quarter of the negroes
Where the railroad and the river
Have doors that face each way
And the entrance to the movie’s
Up an alley up the side.

Pushcarts fold and unfold
In a supermarket sea.
And we better find out, mama,
Where is the colored Laundromat,
Since we moved up to Mount Vernon.

Ralph Ellison as Vespucius
Ina-Youra at the masterhead
Arna Bontemps chief consultant
Molto Bene Mellow Baby Pearlie Mae
Shalom Aleichem Jimmy Baldwin Sammy
Come What May-the signs point:
*Ghana Guinea*
And the toll bridge from Westchester
Is a gangplank rocking risky
Between the deck and shore
Of a boat that never quite
Knew its destination.

In the quarter of the negroes
Ornette and consternation
Claim attention from the papers
That have no news that day of Moscow.

In the pot behind the
Paper doors what’s cooking?
What’s smelling, Leontyne?
Lieder, lovely Lieder
And a leaf of collard green,
Lovely Lieder Leontyne.

In the shadow of the negroes
Nkrumah
In the shadow of the negroes
Nasser Nasser
In the shadow of the negroes
Zik Azikiwe
Cuba Castro Guinea touré
For need or propaganda
Kenyatta
And the Tom dogs of the cabin
The cocoa and the cane brake
The chain gang and the slave block
Tarred and feathered nations
Seagram’s and four roses
$5.00 bags a deck or dagga.
Filibuster versus veto
Like a snapping turtle-
Won’t let go until it thunders
Won’t let go until it thunders
Tears the body from the shadow
Won’t let go until it thunders
In the quarter of the negroes.

And 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 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 Patterson.
Dear, dear darling old white mammies-
Sometimes even buried with our family!
Dear old
Mammy Faubus!
Culture, they said, is a two-way street:
Hand me my mint julep, mammy.
Make haste!