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Callaloo 23.4 (2000) 1194



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For Dubois In Germany

Dwight Maxwell


I too have seen the streets
Of Hamburg and Berlin and though I
Had no hair to comb, I dropped hair there
And a clip of finger nail to say,
If they are found, I have been black here.
With your young Hegelian body you loved
Heights and Germans were high
On themselves then and some treated you
Like a man who had traveled for one century
Nestled in the belly of the sea.
But I know you were astir there
The way the straight billed eagle
Alone and fierce soars its kingdom.
The ship tossed, as tides rekindled
The genetic struggles within dark hulls:
Of Santa Maria, the Bella J, The Argo in mid-wave.
Oh friend, on this transatlantic dream--
At what degree and state did you perceive
All of your senses seemed one sense,
That the cloven tongue of a Negro shall seal
And the two-ness had stopped splitting the hand's palm
As America splits you with its diabolic dye?
DuBois, I am near, and follow close
With the gait of a sagacious slave.
My gossamer wings are about me now
And the Proverbs speaks of you and me
As we flee to gather our double selves across the sea.
Alas, the blue tinctured journey continues.
The intemperance of westward winds soaring high--
So high on white skin and all its benefits.



Dwight Maxwell, who received the MFA degree from New York University, teaches English at Martin Luther King High School in New York City, where he lives. He was born in Jamaica.

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