“If We Must Die,” in Harlem Shadows: The Poems of Claude McKay

If we must die, let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe!

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one death blow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

“I have been on…

“I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have out walked the furthest city light. “– from Robert Frost’s Acquainted with the Night

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I have been acquainted with the night

I have seen blood splatters in splintered floors

stepped in them from the absence of light

stared at the moon until dawn won the fight

in the sky, I

have lied to the dark

insisting that I wasn’t afraid as knuckles met face

in this cuticle of space

how many nights will it take to break 

the circle of family abuse 

in full swing when the lights aren’t in use.

–A. Long