Circling the Daughter

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You came / to be / in the Month of Malcolm,

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And the rain /  fell with a fierce gentleness like a martyr’s tears,

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On the streets of Manhattan, when your Light was Lit.

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And the city sang you welcome. Now, I sit,

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Trembling in your presence. Fourteen years

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Have brought the moon-blood, the roundness, the girl-giggles.

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We are touch-tender in our fears.

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You break my eyes with your beauty.

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Ouu-ou-baby-I love-you.

 

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Do not listen to the lies of old men

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Who fear your power,

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Who preach that you were “born-in-sin.”

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A flower is moral by its own flowering.

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Reach always within

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For the Music and the Dance and the Circling.

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O Tandiwe, my Beloved of this land;

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Your spring will early,

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And when the earth begins its humming,

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Begin you dance with men with a Grin,

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And a Grace of whirling, your place

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Is neither ahead nor behind; neither right nor left.

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The world is Round. Make the sound

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Of your breathing a silver bell at midnight

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Or the chilling wet of the morning dew.

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You break my eyes with your beauty.

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Ouu-ou-baby-I love-you.

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- Etheridge Knight