The Second Sermon on the Warpland
- The Second Sermon on the Warpland
for Walter Bradford
1.This is the urgency: Live!and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.
2.Salve salvage in the spin.Endorse the splendor splashes;stylize the flawed utility;prop a malign or failing light–but know the whirlwind is our commonwealth.Not the easy man, who rides above them all,not the jumbo brigand,not the pet bird of poets, that sweetest sonnet,shall straddle the whirlwind.Nevertheless, live.
3.All about are the cold places,all about are the pushmen and jeopardy, theft—all about are the stormers and scramblers butwhat must our Season be, which starts from Fear?Live and go out.Define andmedicate the whirlwind.
4.The timecracks into furious flower. Lifts its faceall unashamed. And sways in wicked grace.Whose half-black hands assemble orangesis tom-tom hearted(goes in bearing oranges and boom).And there are bells for orphans— [End Page 87] and red and shriek and sheen.A garbageman is dignifiedas any diplomat.Big Bessie's feet hurt like nobody's business,but she stands—bigly—under the unruly scrutiny, stands in the wild weed.
In the wild weedshe is a citizen,and is a moment of highest quality; admirable.
It is lonesome, yes. For we are the last of the loud.Nevertheless, live.
Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind. [End Page 88]
GWENDOLYN BROOKS (1917–2000) published more than twenty poetry collections, including A Street in Bronzeville, Blacks, In the Mecca, The Bean Eaters, and Annie Allen, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize. Among her many honors were an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the Frost Medal, the Shelley Memorial Award, a lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment for the Arts, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Guggenheim Foundation. She was named poet laureate of Illinois in 1968, and in 1985, she became the first black woman to hold the position now known as poet laureate of the United States.
