"Live not for the end-of-song. Live in the along."

On unfathomable convergences and moral voice

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Speech to the Young

by Gwendolyn Brooks

Say to them,
say to the down-keepers,
the sun-slappers,
the self-soilers,
the harmony-hushers,
“Even if you are not ready for day
it cannot always be night.”
You will be right.
For that is the hard home-run.

Live not for battles won.
Live not for the-end-of-the-song.
Live in the along.

from The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks, edited by Elizabeth Alexander (American Poets Project #19), 2005

Art: William H. Johnson”Standing Female Nude in Profile, Recto”

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Creative Invitation

This day is the epitome of paradox and unequal parallels. Let’s not let the arrival of a codswalloping charlatan in false regalia distract us from the vital, life-giving voice of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Feel, think, or write in response to his words:

“I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.”

“I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”

“We are concerned about the constant use of federal funds to support this most notorious expression of segregation. Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death.

I see no alternative to direct action and creative nonviolence to raise the conscience of the nation.”

“They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so this afternoon in a real sense they have something to say to each of us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism…

They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.”

Please write your responses in the comments!