to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and
seeing with those bright wondering eyes that
peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to
us a mockery and whose liberty a lie. i saw the
shadow of the Veil as it passed over my baby;
i saw the cold city towering above the blood-red land. i held my face beside his little cheek,
showed him the star children and the twinkling
lights as they began to flash, and stilled with an
evensong the unvoiced terror of my life.
so sturdy and masterful he grew, so filled
with bubbling life, so tremulous with the unspoken wisdom of a life but eighteen months
distant from the all-life—we were not far from
worshipping this revelation of the divine, my
wife and i. her own life built and molded itself
upon the child; he tinged her every dream and
idealized her every effort. no hands but hers must
touch and garnish those little limbs; no dress or
frill must touch them that had not wearied her
fingers; no voice but hers could coax him off to
dreamland, and she and he together spoke some
soft and unknown tongue and in it held communion. i too mused above his little white bed; saw
the strength of my own arm stretched onward
through the ages through the newer strength of
his; saw the dream of my black fathers stagger a
step onward in the wild phantasm of the world,
heard in his baby voice the voice of the prophet
that was to rise within the Veil.
