Angelou - Celebrations

Copyright 2006 by Maya Angelou All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. R ANDOM H ouse and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. THE FOLLOWING POEMS HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED:
On the Pulse of Morning, A Brave and Startling Truth,
When Great Trees Fall, Amazing Peace, and Mother. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Angelou, Maya.
Celebrations: rituals of peace and prayer / Maya Angelou.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-77792-8
I.

Title
PS3551.N464C45 2006
811.54dc22 2006048645 www.atrandom.com v3.1

A Rock, a River, a Tree, Hosts to species long since departed, Marked the mastodon. The dinosaur, who left dry tokens Of their sojourn here On our planet floor. Any broad alarm of their hastening doom Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages. But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully, Come, you may stand upon my back And face your distant destiny, But seek no haven in my shadow. I will give you no hiding place down here. You, created only a little lower than The angels, have crouched too long in The bruising darkness, Have lain too long Face down in ignorance, Your mouths spilling words Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me, But do not hide your face. Across the wall of the world, A River sings a beautiful song, Come rest here by my side. Each of you a bordered country, Delicate and strangely made, proud, Yet thrusting perpetually under siege. Your armed struggles for profit Have left collars of waste upon My shore, currents of debris upon my breast. Yet, today I call you to my riverside, If you will study war no more. Come, Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs The Creator gave to me when I and the Tree and the stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your Brow and when you yet knew you still Knew nothing. The River sings and sings on. There is a true yearning to respond to The singing River and the wise Rock. So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew, The African and Native American, the Sioux, The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek, The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh, The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher, The Privileged, the Homeless, the Teacher. They hear. They all hear The speaking of the Tree.

Today, the first and last of every Tree Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River. Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River. Each of you, descendant of some Passed-on traveler, has been paid for. You who gave me my first name, you Pawnee, Apache, and Seneca, you Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then, Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of Other seekersdesperate for gain, Starving for gold. You the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Italian, the Scot, You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought, Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare, Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me. I am the Tree planted by the River, Which will not be moved. I the Rock, I the River, I the Tree I am yoursyour Passages have been paid. Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need For this bright morning dawning for you. History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, and if faced With courage, need not be lived again. Lift up your eyes upon The day breaking for you.

Give birth again To the dream. Women, children, men, Take it into the palms of your hands. Mold it into the shape of your most Private need. Sculpt it into The image of your most public self. Lift up your hearts. Each new hour holds new chances For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever To fear, yoked eternally To brutishness. The horizon leans forward, Offering you space to place new steps of change. Here, on the pulse of this fine day, You may have the courage To look up and out upon me, the Rock, the River, the Tree, your country. No less to Midas than the mendicant. No less to you now than the mastodon then.

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. 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.

And when we come to it To the day of peacemaking When we release our fingers From fists of hostility When we come to it When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean When battlefields and coliseum No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters Up with the bruised and bloody grass To lay them in identical plots in foreign soil When the rapacious storming of the churches The screaming racket in the temples have ceased When the pennants are waving gaily When the banners of the world tremble Stoutly in a good, clean breeze When we come to it When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders And our children can dress their dolls in flags of truce When land mines of death have been removed And the aged can walk into evenings of peace When religious ritual is not perfumed By the incense of burning flesh And childhood dreams are not kicked awake By nightmares of sexual abuse 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 Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji Stretching to the Rising Sun Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor, Nurtures all creatures in their depths and on their shores These are not the only wonders of the world When we come to it We, this people, on this minuscule globe Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade, and the dagger Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace We, this people, on this mote of matter In whose mouths abide cankerous words Which challenge our very existence Yet out of those same mouths Can come songs of such exquisite sweetness That the heart falters in its labor And the body is quieted into awe 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, we are the true wonder of this world That is when, and only when, We come to it.