Devil's Night by Ze'ev Chafets

Author:Ze'ev Chafets [Chafets, Zev]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8041-7141-0
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

THE HOSTILE SUBURBS

There is a lovely park across the street from Dudley Randall’s house, on the west side of Detroit, but at three in the afternoon it was deserted. At the curb, almost directly opposite the house, two very tough-looking young men sat in a late-model Pontiac. They passed a bottle between them and gazed out the windows, as if they were waiting for someone.

I rang the bell and Dudley Randall had to open several locks to let me in. At seventy-four he was a stooped, tired-looking man with bifocals, dressed in a flannel shirt and khaki trousers. His living room was lined with books, the walls were covered with African art and there were National Geographic magazines and anthologies of poetry stacked on the coffee table. Above a bookcase I saw a plaque, signed by the mayor, proclaiming Randall the Poet Laureate of Detroit.

Randall looked out his front window and gestured at the car in front. “I moved across from the park because I thought it would be nice,” he said. “But those two sit there every day and drink whiskey. And then they urinate in the bushes.” He made a sad face, offered me a seat and took one himself.

Randall has lived his life with books. For years he was a librarian and poet-in-residence at Wayne State University. During that time he founded the Broadside Press, a forum for black poets. But now, retired, he doesn’t write anymore, nor does he bother much with literature. “I no longer find truth in the great poets or the great books,” he said. There was a pause. “I still read Tolstoy,” he added, and fell silent again.

“What’s it like being the Poet Laureate of Detroit?” I asked. Randall considered for a moment. “Poetry isn’t such a big thing in Detroit,” he said finally, in a flat tone.

“What do you think of the city?” I asked, trying hard to make conversation. Friends had told me that Dudley Randall was one of the smartest, most perceptive people in Detroit, but he seemed too discouraged to talk. He looked out the window at the car. “I want to move away,” he said. “I’d like to go someplace where it’s warm.”

A few weeks earlier, on a visit to the mayor’s office, I had noticed a poem of Randall’s, entitled “Detroit Renaissance,” which is dedicated to Coleman Young, hanging on a wall in the reception room. Now I asked Randall about it, and he rose slowly, returning with a slim volume of his work, which includes the poem. He sat in silence as I read it to myself.

Cities have died, have burned,

Yet phoenix-like returned

To soar up livelier, lovelier than before. Detroit has felt the fire

Yet each time left the pyre

As if the flames had power to restore.

First, burn away the myths

Of what it was, and is—

A lovely, tree-laned town of peace and trade.

Hatred has festered here,

And bigotry and fear

Filled streets with strife and raised the barricade.

Wealth of a city lies,

Not in its factories,

Its marts and

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