James Baldwin as Poet

I had not encountered James Baldwin's poetry before. I guess I supposed it would be like reading Faulkner's poetry (gak!)

This one is from the anthology of gay love poetry, Love Speaks its Name.

I salute the editor for finding this.

The poem isn't bad and has its moments.

I did find this cringeworthy: "I see / that time's cruel ability / to make one's wait / is time's reality."

That's just awful.

He's trying for a singsong pseudo-naivete in the poem, but that just breaks the effect he's going for with the honesty of the craving here.

And the easy rhyme that follows is nearly as bed. That's a bit children's lit.

And yet overall I like the poem.

I don't think there's any allusion to the Munich slaughter of what, the previous year? You could see that with a stretched reading, I suppose. I don't.

I suppose it reads very much like a letter, an epistolary poem, a love letter lineated into poetry. Maybe that's how it came about?

Anyway, here's the poem.

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 eyes 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 their long journeys,
each bears the other,
whirring,
stirring
love occurring
in the middle of the terrifying air.