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By Maya Angelou
Past aloof stars, across the
way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all
sighs tell us
It is possible and
imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth.
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to
cool our palms
When we come to it
When the curtain falls on
the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn
and scrubbed clean
When battlefields and
coliseum
No longer rake our unique
and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and
bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in
foreign soil
When the rapacious storming
of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples
have ceased
When the pennants are waving
gaily
When the banners of the
world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean
breeze
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall
from our shoulders
And children dress their
dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death
have been removed
And the aged can walk into
evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not
perfumed
By the incense of burning
flesh
And childhood dreams are not
kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not
the Pyramids
With their stones set in
mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets
Who reach daily for the
bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark
for tokens of peace
We, this people, on this
mote of matter
In whose mouths abide
cankerous words
Which challenge our very
existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite
sweetness
That the heart falters in
its labor
And the body is quieted into
awe
We, this people, on this
small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with
such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is
sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can
touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is
happy to bow
And the proud back is glad
to bend
Out of such chaos, of such
contradiction
We learn that we are neither
devils nor divines.
When we come to it
We, this people, on this
wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of
this earth
Have the power to fashion
for this earth
A climate where every man
and every woman
Can live freely without
sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are
the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this
world
What is when and only when
We come to it.