Circling the Daughter
You came / to be / in the Month of Malcolm,
And the rain / fell with a fierce gentleness like a martyr’s tears,
On the streets of Manhattan, when your Light was Lit.
And the city sang you welcome. Now, I sit,
Trembling in your presence. Fourteen years
Have brought the moon-blood, the roundness, the girl-giggles.
We are touch-tender in our fears.
You break my eyes with your beauty.
Ouu-ou-baby-I love-you.
Do not listen to the lies of old men
Who fear your power,
Who preach that you were “born-in-sin.”
A flower is moral by its own flowering.
Reach always within
For the Music and the Dance and the Circling.
O Tandiwe, my Beloved of this land;
Your spring will early,
And when the earth begins its humming,
Begin you dance with men with a Grin,
And a Grace of whirling, your place
Is neither ahead nor behind; neither right nor left.
The world is Round. Make the sound
Of your breathing a silver bell at midnight
Or the chilling wet of the morning dew.
You break my eyes with your beauty.
Ouu-ou-baby-I love-you.
- Etheridge Knight