In the morning I wrote in black ink a dozen poems

about ghetto children deprived of food and shoes

and a concerned city that sent one notebook

to six school children;

I wrote of black mothers fighting the ice of apathy

that rings my city's slums;

I wrote of black men trapped in the hot, spiraling fire

of ancient hate;

I wrote twelve tragic stanzas of hope dying

slowly on the dark streets of my city's slums.

In the evening I turned on the news:

I saw fires blazing black through ghetto streets

and no fireman's sirens sang;

I saw shoppers leaving stores,

arms filled:

they trotted under glaring sun,

looked back from the shelter of low-brimmed hats,

and trotted on.

I saw a lawman kill a bare-footed black child

clutching a loaf of bread

and a pair of ten-dollar shoes

on the cold-noon streets of Newark:

I saw a black mother lose her eyes on Cleveland's East Side,

And I saw her baby die

when a guardsman saw black

and squeezed

his silver trigger.

In the nation's capital,

there were snow flurries

and shifting winds.