STAGGERLEE WONDERS — JAMES BALDWIN

1

I always wonder
what they think the niggers are doing
while they, the pink and alabaster pragmatists, 
are containing 
Russia  
and defining and re-defining and re-aligning 
China, 
nobly restraining themselves, meanwhile,
from blowing up that earth
which they have already 
blasphemed into dung: 
the gentle, wide-eyed, cheerful
ladies, and their men,
nostalgic for the noble cause of Vietnam,
nostalgic for noble causes,
aching, nobly, to wade through the blood of savages—
ah—!
Uncas shall never leave the reservation, 
except to purchase whisky at the State Liquor Store.
The Panama Canal shall remain forever locked: 
there is a way around every treaty.
We will turn the tides of the restless
Caribbean, 
the sun will rise, and set
on our hotel balconies as we see fit.
The natives will have nothing to complain about,
indeed, they will begin to be grateful, will be better off than ever before. 
They will learn to defer gratification
and save up for things, like we do. 

Oh, yes. They will.
We have only to make an offer
they cannot refuse.

This flag has been planted on the moon:
it will be interesting to see 
what steps the moon will take to be revenged 
for this quite breathtaking presumption
This people
masturbate in winding sheets. 
They have hacked their children to pieces. 
They have never honoured a single treaty 
made with anyone, anywhere.
The walls of their cities
are as foul as their children.
No wonder their children come at them with knives.
Mad Charlie man's son was one of their children, 
had got his shit together
by the time he left kindergarten,
and, as for Patty, heiress of all the ages,
she had the greatest vacation of any heiress, anywhere:

Golly-gee, whillikens, Mom, real guns!
and they come with a real bug, black funky stud, too: 
oh, Ma! he's making eyes at me!

Oh, noble Duke Wayne, 
be careful in them happy hunting grounds.
They say the only good Indian 
is a dead Indian,
by what I say is, 
you can't be too careful, you hear?
Oh, towering Ronnie Reagan,
wise and resigned lover of redwoods, 
deeply beloved, winning man-child of the yearning

Republic

from diaper to football field to Warner Brothers

sound-stages,

be thou our grinning, gently phallic, Big Boy of all the ages!

Salt peanuts, salt peanuts,

for dear hearts and gentle people, 

and cheerful, shining, simple Uncle Sam!

Nigger, read this and run!

Now, if you can't read, 

run anyhow!

From Manifest Destiny

(Cortez, and all his men

silent upon a peak in Darien)

to A Decent Interval,

and the chopper rises above Saigon,

abandoning the noble cause

and the people we have made ignoble

and whom we leave there, now, to die, 

one moves, With All Deliberate Speed,

to the South China Sea, and beyond, 

where millions of new niggers

await glad tidings!

No, said the Great Man's Lady,

I'm against abortion,

I always feel that's killing somebody.

Well, what about capital punishment?

I think the death penalty helps.

That's right.

Up to your ass in niggers

on Death Row.

Oh, Susanna,

don't you cry for me!

2

Well, I guess what the niggers 

is supposed to be doing

is putting themselves in the path 

of that old sweet chariot

and have it swing down and carry us home.

That would help, as they say,

and they got ways

of sort of nudging the chariot.

They still got influence

with Wind and Water,

though they in for some surprises

with Cloud and Fire.

My days are not their days.

My ways are not their ways.

I would not think of them,

one way or the other,

Did not they so grotesquely

block the view

between me and my brother.

And, so, I always wonder:

can blindness be desired?

Then, what must the blinded eyes have seen

to wish to see no more!

For I have seen, 

in the eyes regarding me, 

or regarding my brother, 

have seen deep in the farthest valley

of the eye, have seen

a flame leap up, then flicker and go out,

have seen a veil come down,

leaving myself, and the other,

alone in that cave

which every soul remembers, and

out of which, desperately afraid, 

I turn, turn, stagger, stumble out, 

into the healing air,

fall flat on the healing ground, 

singing praises, counseling

my heart, my soul, to praise.

What is it that this people

cannot forget?

Surely, they cannot be deluded

as to imagine that their crimes

are original?

There is nothing in the least original

about the fiery tongs to the eyeballs,

the sex torn from the socket,

the infant ripped from the womb, 

the brains dashed out against rock,

nothing original about Judas,

or Peter, or you or me: nothing:

we are liars and cowards all,

or nearly all, or nearly all the time:

for we also ride the lightning,

answer the thunder, penetrate whirlwinds,

curl up on the floor of the sun,

and pick our teeth with thunderbolts.

Then, perhaps they imagine

that their crimes are not crimes? 

Perhaps.

Perhaps that is why they cannot repent, 

why there is no possibility of repentance.

Manifest destiny is a hymn to madness, 

feeding on itself, ending

(when it ends) in madness: 

the action is blindness and pain,

pain bringing a torpor so deep 

that every act is willed,

is desperately forced,

is willed to be a blow: 

the hand becomes a fist,

the prick becomes a club, 

the womb a dangerous swamp,

the hope, and fear, of love

is acid in the marrow of the bone. 

No, their fire is not quenched, 

nor can be: the oil feeding the flames

being the unadmitted terror of the wrath of God. 

Yes. But let us put it in another, 

less theological way: 

though theology has absolutely nothing to do 

with what I am trying to say.

But the moment God is mentioned

theology is summoned

to buttress or demolish belief:

an exercise which renders belief irrelevant

and adds to the despair of Fifth Avenue 

on any afternoon, 

the people moving, homeless, through the city,

praying to find sanctuary before the sky 

and the towers come tumbling down, 

before the earth opens, as it does in Superman.

They know that no one will appear

to turn back time, 

they know it, just as they know

that the earth has opened before 

and will open again, just as they know

that their empire is falling, is doomed,

nothing can hold it up, nothing.

We are not talking about belief. 

3

I wonder how they think

the niggers, make it, 

how come the niggers are still here. 

But, then, again, I don't think they dare

to think of that: no: 

I'm fairly certain they don't think of that at all.

Lord, 

I with the alabaster lady of the house, 

with Beulah.

Beulah about sixty, built in four-square, 

biceps like Mohammed Ali,

she at the stove, fixing biscuits, 

scrambling eggs and bacon, fixing coffee, 

pouring juice, and the lady of the house,

she say, she don't know how

she'd get along without Beulah

and Beulah just silently grunts,

I reckon you don't,

and keeps on keeping on

and the lady of the house say

She's just like one of the family,

and Beulah turns, gives me a look, 

sucks her teeth and rolls her eyes

in the direction of the lady's back, and

keeps on keeping on. 

While they are containing 

Russia

and entering tonto the quicksand of 

China

and patronizing

Africa, 

and calculating

the Caribbean plunder, and

the South China Sea booty, 

the niggers are aware that no one has discussed 

anything at all with the niggers. 

Well. Niggers don't own nothing,

got no flag, even out names 

are hand-me-downs

and you don't change that 

by calling yourself X:

sometimes that just makes it worse, 

like obliterating the path that leads back

to whence you came, and 

to where you can begin. 

and, anyway, none of this changes the reality, 

which is, for example, that I do not want my son 

to dies in Guantanamo, 

or anywhere else, for that matter, 

serving the Stars and Stripes. 

(I've seen some stars.

I got some stripes.) 

Neither (incidentally)

has anyone discussed the Bomb with the niggers:

the incoherent feeling is, the less

the nigger knows about the Bomb, the better: 

the lady of the house

smiles nervously in your direction

as though she had just been overheard

discussing family, or sexual secrets, 

and changes the subject to Education, 

or Full Employment, or the Welfare rolls, 

the smile saying, Don't be dismayed.

We know how you feel. You can trust us.

Yeah. I would like to believe you.

But we are not talking about belief.

4

The sons of greed, the heirs of plunder,

are approaching the end of their journey: 

it is amazing that they approach without wonder, 

as though they have, themselves, become

that scorched and blasphemed earth, 

the stricken buffalo, the slaughtered tribes, 

the endless, virgin, bloodsoaked plain,

the famine, the silence, the children's eyes, 

murder masquerading as salvation, seducing

every democratic eye,

the mouths of truth and anguish choked with cotton, 

rape delirious with the fragrance of magnolia,

the hacking of the fruit of their loins to pieces, 

hey! the tar-baby sons and nephews, the high-yaller

nieces,

and Tom's black prick hacked off

to rustle in crinoline, 

to hang, heaviest of heirlooms,

between the pink and alabaster breasts

of the Great Man's Lady,

or worked into the sash at the waist

of the high-yaller Creole bitch, or niece,

a chunk of shining brown-black satin,

staring, staring, like the single eye of God:

creation yearns to re-create a time

when we were able to recognize a crime. 

Alas, 

my stricken kinsmen, 

the party is over: 

there have never been any white people, 

anywhere: the trick was accomplished with mirrors—

look: where is your image now? 

where your inheritance, 

on what rock stands this pride?

Oh, 

I counsel you, 

leave history alone.

She is exhausted, 

sitting, staring into her dressing-room mirror,

and wondering what rabbit, now, 

to pull out what hat, 

and seriously considering retirement, 

even though she knows her public

dare not let her go.

She must change. 

Yes. History must change. 

A slow, syncopated

relentless music begins

suggesting her re-entry,

transformed, virginal as she was,

in the Beginning, untouched, 

as the Word was spoken, 

before the rape which debased her

to be the whore of multitudes, or, 

as one might say, before she became the Star, 

whose name, above our title, 

carries the Show, making History the patsy,

responsible for every flubbed line, 

every missed cue, responsible for the life

and death, of all bright illusions

and dark delusions,

Lord, History is weary

of her unspeakable liaison with Time, 

for Time and History

have never seen eye to eye: 

Time laughs at History

and time and time and time again

Time traps History in a lie.

But we always, somehow, managed

to roar History back onstage

to take another bow,

to justify, to sanctify

the journey until now. 

Time warned us to ask for out money back, 

and disagreed with History

as concerns colours white and black.

Not only do we come from further back,

but the light of the Sun

marries all colours as one. 

Kinsmen, 

I have seen you betray your Saviour

(it is you who call Him Saviour) 

so many times, and

I have spoken to Him about you, 

behind your back. 

Quite a lot has been going on 

behind your back, and, 

if your phone has not yet been disconnected, 

it will soon begin to ring: 

informing you, for example, that whole generation, 

in Africa, is about to die, 

and a new generation is about to rise,

and will not need your bribes, 

or your persuasions, any more: 

not your morality. No plundered gold—

Ah! Kinsmen, if I could make you see

the crime is not what you have done to me!

It is you who are blind, 

you, bowed down with chains, 

you, whose children mock you, and seek another 

master,

you, who cannot look man or woman or child in the 

eye,

whose sleep is blank with terror, 

for whom love died long ago,

somewhere between the airport and the safe-deposit

box,

the buying and selling of rising or falling stocks, 

you, who miss Zanzibar and Madagascar and Kilimanjaro

and lions and tigers and elephants and zebras 

and flying fish and crocodiles and alligators and

leopards

and crashing waterfalls and endless rivers, 

flowers fresher than Eden, silence sweeter than the 

grace of God,

passion at every turning, throbbing in the bush, 

thicker, oh, than honey in the hive, 

dripping

dripping

opening, welcoming, aching from toe to bottom

to spine, 

sweet heaven on the line

to last forever, yes, 

but, now, 

rejoicing ends, man, a price remains to pay, 

your innocence costs too much

and we can't carry you on our books

or our backs, any longer: baby,

find another Eden, another apple tree,

somewhere, if you can, 

and find some other natives, somewhere else,

to listen to you bellow

till you come, just like a man, 

but we don't need you,

are sick of being a fantasy to feed you, 

and of being the principal accomplice to your

crime: 

for, it is your crime, now, the cross to which you

cling, 

your Alpha and Omega for everything. 

Well (others have told you)

your clown's grown weary, the puppet master

is bored speechless with this monotonous disaster, 

and is long gone, does not belong to you, 

any more than my woman, or my child, 

ever belonged to you. 

During this long travail

our ancestors spoke to us, and we listened, 

and we tried to make you hear life in out song

but ow it matters not at all to me 

whether you know what I am talking about—or not:

I know why are we are no blinded

by your brightness, are able to see you, 

who cannot see us. I know 

why we are still here. 

Godspeed. 

The niggers are calculating, 

from day to day, life everlasting, 

and wish you well: 

but decline to imitate the Son of the Morning, 

and rule in Hell. 

   

James Baldwin, Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems, ed. Nikky Finney (Boston: Beacon Press, 2014)