The Poet Has Passed Away....

Artist Muhammad Yungai

     

The poet is the witness and the visionary.
She is the one who voices what others are too fearful to say. She feels what others cannot name and then burns in the agony of the emotion, in the grip of its terrible suffering for the sake of knowing...for the sake of speaking of it..in order to record the experience, to give power to our humanity and to destroy and demolish the evils that cannot win in the face of a heart that will not die, that will not be  ground to dust. The poet is the survivor of fires of that destroy lesser hearts and souls.

 She revels within the ecstatic joy found at the diminution of pain, and she shares her passion...like fire enlightens the darkness around her and gives warmth and illumination to all those in her blessed presence. She survives, she fights, she envisions and she lives to tell her kin, who are all humans, how to find the ecstasy and exultation for themselves.  

The poet is the being we rely on to feel that which we fear....to endure bitterness yet she lives to conquer and stand high abobe the ugliness and dirt and lowliness of this life...

The poet is she who can give power and courage to others because she has experienced fear and subjugation yet been freed. 
She gives name to what we fear, so that we can value love.

The poet has passed away.

God give her rest, joy and peace.

                                                                            

Dancing with Amiri Baraka