BEBERAPA SAJAK AKU SUKA

The Mask

by Maya Angelou

We wear the mask that grins and lies.
It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes.
This debt we pay to human guile
With torn and bleeding hearts . . .
We smile and mouth the myriad subtleties.
Why should the world think otherwise
In counting all our tears and sighs.
Nay let them only see us while
We wear the mask.

We smile but oh my God
Our tears to thee from tortured souls arise
And we sing Oh Baby doll, now we sing . . .
The clay is vile beneath our feet
And long the mile
But let the world think otherwise.
We wear the mask.

When I think about myself
I almost laugh myself to death.
My life has been one great big joke!
A dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke.
I laugh so hard HA! HA! I almos’ choke
When I think about myself.

Seventy years in these folks’ world
The child I works for calls me girl
I say “HA! HA! HA! Yes ma’am!”
For workin’s sake
I’m too proud to bend and
Too poor to break
So . . . I laugh! Until my stomach ache
When I think about myself.
My folks can make me split my side
I laugh so hard, HA! HA! I nearly died
The tales they tell sound just like lying
They grow the fruit but eat the rind.
Hmm huh! I laugh uhuh huh huh . . .
Until I start to cry when I think about myself
And my folks and the children.

My fathers sit on benches,
Their flesh count every plank,
The slats leave dents of darkness
Deep in their withered flank.
And they gnarled like broken candles,
All waxed and burned profound.
They say, but sugar, it was our submission
that made your world go round.

There in those pleated faces
I see the auction block
The chains and slavery’s coffles
The whip and lash and stock.
My fathers speak in voices
That shred my fact and sound
They say, but sugar, it was our submission
that made your world go round.

They laugh to conceal their crying,
They shuffle through their dreams
They stepped ’n fetched a country
And wrote the blues in screams.
I understand their meaning,
It could an did derive
From living on the edge of death
They kept my race alive
By wearing the mask! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! 

Maya Angelou adapted the 1896 poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, "We Wear the Mask."

For My People

by Margaret Walker

For my people everywhere singing their slave songs
repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues
and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an
unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an
unseen power;

For my people lending their strength to the years, to the
gone years and the now years and the maybe years,
washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending
hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching
dragging along never gaining never reaping never
knowing and never understanding;

For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama
backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor
and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking
and playhouse and concert and store and hair and
Miss Choomby and company;

For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn
to know the reasons why and the answers to and the
people who and the places where and the days when, in
memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we
were black and poor and small and different and nobody
cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood;

For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to
be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and
play and drink their wine and religion and success, to
marry their playmates and bear children and then die
of consumption and anemia and lynching;

For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox
Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New
Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy
people filling the cabarets and taverns and other
people’s pockets and needing bread and shoes and milk and
land and money and something—something all our own;

For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time
being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when
burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied, and shackled
and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures
who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;

For my people blundering and groping and floundering in
the dark of churches and schools and clubs
and societies, associations and councils and committees and
conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and
devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches,
preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by
false prophet and holy believer;

For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way
from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,
trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people,
all the faces, all the Adams and eves and their countless generations;

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a
bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second
generation full of courage issue forth; let a people
loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of
healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing
in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs
be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now
rise and take control.

000

The poem ‘For My People’ by Margaret Walker is one of the poems that shall remain relevant in history as it paints a deep, irrevocably mysterious meaning whose but incognito mode of articulation remains a mystery unto the imagination of the reader. The title of the master piece vibrantly articulates the thematic rationale and should the greatness of a poem be the tested by universality of phrase, then ‘For my people’ is the Phrase that roves down the stanzas; with violent, throbbing, pounding and enigmatic style and poetic structure whose intensity and very depths can be felt in the weighted, indented, heavy and intensively written paragraphs with words of resilience and war. The title, structure, theme and image of the poem is just but metaphoric from the very first to the last of stanza where the author makes numerous direct comparisons that revel the truth about slavery, servitude, racism and freedom fighting. The author has tailored images in the minds of the readers that naturally speak to the hearts and the inert personality. It’s a freedom song, a war song, a political refrain, a historical artifact, a social media and a childhood memory painted in dark colors with eloquence of speech and the untaming realism.

The very first of stanzas in this poem, paints a picture of people reciting refrains of dirges and blues in a burial ceremony where they are in despair with nothing remaining for them, but to look up to their god (whites) in a prayer mood at night, totally subjected and sold to servitude and humbling themselves to this unseen power. This metaphor literally shows the depth of slavery in the United States of America. The second stanza, begins very well by highlighting the way the blacks have lent their whole strength to the past years, the now years and the maybe years known to none. However, through the licensed overuse of verbs: ironing, sewing, scrubbing etc. paints a deep image of how slavery’s anchorage unto the crust of racism afflicts the blacks. Therefore this metaphor brings a conglomerate of pain championed using the overuse of verbs to reiterate the thematic melody of servitude and forced labor where the receiving end of the resultant side have the blacks misused as articulated by the very finishing words…’never gaining, never reaping, never knowing, never understanding’.

The third, fourth and the fifth stanzas, however, are the pivotal points of poetic style and design as far as imagery is concerned. The late Walker uses the comparison of children’s growth with passing time and especially when she points out the memories of her playmates in the dust and sand of Alabama which paints an image and understanding of blacks toiling in the mud and sand to free themselves. Walker portrays innocence of kids; growing in religious and educational subtle institutions founded in the dirt and soils of corrupt systems, that will have the kids grow with time to understand the reality of slavery and the ‘misfortune’ of being born blacks, who have no value nor life nor meaning in the eyes of their unseen god, until they are grown enough to marry their fellow blacks (playmates). This marriage at a critical point of view is a metaphor that shows the beginning of freedom fighting that is won through unity of the blacks to fight for their rights. Thus the three stanzas portray the time that passes so fast while slavery continues to handcuff the blacks without the hope of ever being freed unless through the marriages amongst themselves (unity).

In the sixth stanza, Walker takes the reader through another phase of the chronology of events. This is a phase of freedom fighting painted by the simple yet violent wordings the author uses,’ and other peoples’ pockets and needing bread, shoes, land and money’. This metaphor is clearly shown as the blacks demonstrate in the 47th street of Chicago, New York Avenue and streets of New Orleans. The pounding of their feet, the shouting, the yelling and the cry of their burdened hearts is felt in the words Walker uses. The truth about slavery, forced labor, the pain, affliction, is clearly demonstrated where there are questions that are asked by the blacks that have no answers (Benet 5). The seventh and the eighth stanzas have a metaphor whose but in-depth feeling brings an image of crossing over the red sea full of blood to the last drop, bodies to the last of men, women in labor and innocent children who do not have a clue of what mistake they have done to be black. The struggle, pain, torture and affliction the blacks have gone through for so long is coming to an instant halt at the denouement of the poem. The intensity and the smell of freedom that wafts itself in the shores of the blacks’ ocean of thoughts are ready for take-off.

The very last of stanzas is at some point, though not clearly shown, alludes to the legendary Exodus: the story of the children of Israel in the scriptures that is celebrated as the Passover feast to commemorate the difficult times the Israelites had in Egypt. In this poem, the ship of freedom fighting has taken off, and the way the stanza is structured, exemplifies the very realism of racism and climax of servitude that is being fought against by the blacks. It is very much attributed in the metaphor where the blacks are giving the last of their drop of blood, the remaining pound of flesh in them, the hobbling bones and selves that are dying pressed to the wall, as Claude McKay in his famous poem, “If we Must Die’ articulates ,but fighting back so that one day their blood may not be shed in vain but for the memory of the won freedom, not for blacks, but for all people, black and white (Adam and Eves). The last stanza ends with power, vigor and highest spirit of intonation and pitch of freedom songs as the entire State of the United States of America march to freedom and the promised land full of happiness, love, peace and equality.

Benét S. V Modern American Poetry: For My People, by Margaret Walker, Yale Series of Younger Poets. New Haven: Yale UP (41)6:5-6, 11th June 1942 print. Analysis by S. K, Love Poems 23rd Feb 2016

 

Kenang-Kenangan Bagaimana harus kuucapkan pengakuan ini: Aku jatuh cinta berulangkali pada matamu, danau dalam hutan di negeri ajaib yang jauh menyelusup dalam ingatan itu. Berabad-abad yang lalu, kuucapkan selamat tinggal pada apa pun yang berbau dongeng, atau masa silam. Tetapi cinta, bukan sebotol coca cola. Atau film Disney; si sana tokoh apa pun tak pernah mati. Juga bukan Rumi yang menari. Sebab pada matamu bertemu semua musim, sejarah, dan sesuatu yang mengingatkan aku pada suatu hari ketika waktu berhenti, dan kusapa engkau mesra sekali. Kini, bahkan wajahmu samar kuingat kembali. Haruskah kuucapkan pengakuan ini: Aku jatuh cinta berulangkali pada matamu, danau dalam hutan di negeri ajaib yang jauh menyelusup dalam ingatan itu. Tetapi cinta, bukan sekotak popok kertas. Atau sayap sembilan puluh sembilan burung Attar yang terbakar. Cinta, barangkali, kegagapanku mengecup sepasang alismu 1994