These feet have walked ten thousand miles working for white folks and another ten thousand keeping up with colored.

But there are certain very practical things American Negro writers can do. And must do. There's a song that says, "the time ain't long." That song is right. Something has got to change in America-and change soon. We must help that change to come.

Rest at pale evening... A tall slim tree... Night coming tenderly Black like me

Good evening, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? Trilling the treble And twining the bass Into midnight ruffles Of cat-gut lace.

I will not take 'but' for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy's 'but' too long.

So since I'm still here livin', I guess I will live on. I could've died for love-- But for livin' I was born.

Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.