The answer is: Live happily!

The Answer is: Live Happily!

Copyright © 2010 by Alice Walker

To all my relations who have known this suffering. And for Miles Davis, just because. Happy New Year.

When you thought me poor,
my poverty was shaming.
When blackness was unwelcome

we found it best

that I stay home.

When by the miracle

of fierce dreaming and hard work

Life fulfilled our every want

you found me crassly

well off;
not trimly,
inconspicuously wealthy

like your rich friends.

Still black too,
now

I owned too much and too many
of everything.

Woe is me: I became a

success! Blackness, who

knows how?
Became suddenly

in!

What to do?
Now that Fate appears
(for the moment anyhow)
to have dismissed

abject failure

in any case?
Now that moonlight and night

have blessed me.
Now that the sun
un
affected by criticism

of any sort,
implacably beams

the kiss filled magic that creates
the dark and radiant wonder

of my face.

From The World Will Follow Joy: Turning Madness Into Flowers (in process).


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