Praise Be

By Yusef Komunyakaa

When the trees were guilty, hugged up

to history & locked in a cross-brace

with Whitman's Louisiana live oak,

you went into that mossy weather.

Did you witness the shotguns at Angola

riding on horseback through the tall sway

of sugarcane, the glint of blue steel

in the bloodred strawberry fields?

Silence was backed up in the cypress,

but you could hear the birds of woe

singing praise where the almost broken-

through sorrow rose from the deep woods

& walked out into moonshine as the brave

ones. You went among those who had half

a voice, whose ancestors mastered quicksand

by disappearing. Maybe our paths crossed

ghosts hogtied in the wounded night,

but it is only now I say this: Galway,

thanks for going down into our fierce hush

at the crossroads to look fear in the eye.

Copyright Credit: Yusef Komunyakaa, "Praise Be" from The Emperor of Water Clocks. Copyright © 2015 by Yusef Komunyakaa. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Source: The Emperor of Water Clocks (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2015)