Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems by James Baldwin

Author:James Baldwin [Baldwin, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8070-8487-8
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2014-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

Munich, Winter 1973 (for Y.S.)

In a strange house,

a strange bed

in a strange town,

a very strange me

is waiting for you.

Now

it is very early in the morning.

The silence is loud.

The baby is walking about

with his foaming bottle,

making strange sounds

and deciding, after all,

to be my friend.

You

arrive tonight.

How dull time is!

How empty—and yet,

since I am sitting here,

lying here,

walking up and down here,

waiting,

I see

that time’s cruel ability

to make one wait

is time’s reality.

I see your hair

which I call red.

I lie here in this bed.

Someone teased me once,

a friend of ours—

saying that I saw your hair red

because I was not thinking

of the hair on your head.

Someone also told me,

a long time ago:

my father said to me,

It is a terrible thing,

son,

to fall into the hands of the living God.

Now,

I know what he was saying.

I could not have seen red

before finding myself

in this strange, this waiting bed.

Nor had my naked eye suggested

that colour was created

by the light falling, now,

on me,

in this strange bed,

waiting

where no one has ever rested!

The streets, I observe,

are wintry.

It feels like snow.

Starlings circle in the sky,

conspiring,

together, and alone,

unspeakable journeys

into and out of the light.

I know

I will see you tonight.

And snow

may fall

enough to freeze our tongues

and scald our eyes.

We may never be found again!

Just as the birds above our heads

circling

are singing,

knowing

that, in what lies before them,

the always unknown passage,

wind, water, air,

the failing light

the falling night

the blinding sun

they must get the journey done.

Listen.

They have wings and voices

are making choices

are using what they have.

They are aware

that, on long journeys,

each bears the other,

whirring,

stirring

love occurring

in the middle of the terrifying air.

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