#NPM2020 Day 21: Poem for July 4, 1994 by Sonia Sanchez

If you spent a lot of time with me last summer, you know that I spent most of it on a deep reading of the US Constitution, and, following that, a comparative reading of the constitutions of other nations. (Stay with me — more details on that to come, but later, without the bait & switch of a National Poetry Month headline.) I discovered this poem around the same time. I think I would have loved it regardless of tapping into some obscure academic niche I’d worked myself into but I am an absolute sucker for an obscure academic niche so I was in.

Sonia Sanchez, I learned, is a Black feminist poet, playwright, and teacher, but her academic background is in political science. (This poem in particular comes with a headnote that it is dedicated to Václav Havel, a poet and playwright himself who became the first President of the Czech Republic after it was formed following the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993.) Finally, she lives in Philadelphia: the land of the endless commemoration of the Constitution and all it did and all it continues to do; all it didn’t do, and all it continues not to do. I share all this because this poem is such a perfect example of the ways that lens and lived experience shape the art we create.

It also does a great job touching on hope that acknowledges the deep injustices of the past (and present), and that doesn’t wade into undirected optimism. I think so often these days about hope, and when I do, I think about this kind of hope — the hope that only promises itself to us if we build it together, organizing alongside (and deferring to) those most marginalized by the long history, not unique to the US but certainly raging within it, of failing to live up to we the people.

Poem for July 4, 1994, by Sonia Sanchez

1.

It is essential that Summer be grafted to
bones marrow earth clouds blood the
eyes of our ancestors.
It is essential to smell the beginning
words where Washington, Madison, Hamilton,
Adams, Jefferson assembled amid cries of:

“The people lack of information”
“We grow more and more skeptical”
“This Constitution is a triple-headed monster”
“Blacks are property”

It is essential to remember how cold the sun
how warm the snow snapping
around the ragged feet of soldiers and slaves.
It is essential to string the sky
with the saliva of Slavs and
Germans and Anglos and French
and Italians and Scandinavians,
and Spaniards and Mexicans and Poles
and Africans and Native Americans.
It is essential that we always repeat:
we the people,
we the people,
we the people.

2.

“Let us go into the fields” one
brother told the other brother. And
the sound of exact death
raising tombs across the centuries.
Across the oceans. Across the land.

3.

It is essential that we finally understand:
this is the time for the creative
human being
the human being who decides
to talk upright in a human
fashion in order to save this
earth from extinction.

This is the time for the creative
Man. Woman. Who must decide
that She. He. Can live in peace.
Racial and sexual justice on
this earth.

This is the time for you and me.
African American. Whites. Latinos.
Gays. Asians. Jews. Native
Americans. Lesbians. Muslims.
All of us must finally bury
the elitism of race superiority
the elitism of sexual superiority
the elitism of economic superiority
the elitism of religious superiority.

So we welcome you on the celebration
of 218 years Philadelphia. America.

So we salute you and say:
Come, come, come, move out into this world
nourish your lives with a
spirituality that allows us to respect
each other’s birth.
come, come, come, nourish the world where
every 3 days 120,000 children die
of starvation or the effects of starvation;
come, come, come, nourish the world
where we will no longer hear the
screams and cries of womens, girls,
and children in Bosnia, El Salvador,
Rwanda…AhAhAhAh AHAHAHHHHHH

Ma-ma. Dada. Mamacita. Baba.
Mama. Papa. Momma. Poppi.
The soldiers are marching in the streets
near the hospitals but the nurses say
we are safe and the soldiers are
laughing marching firing calling
out to us i don’t want to die i
am only 9 yrs old, i am only 10 yrs old
i am only 11 yrs old and i cannot
get out of the bed because they have cut
off one of my legs and i hear the soldiers
coming toward our rooms and i hear
the screams and the children are
running out of the room i can’t get out
of the bed i don’t want to die Don’t
let me die Rwanda. America. United
Nations. Don’t let me die…………..

And if we nourish ourselves, our communities
our countries and say

no more hiroshima
no more auschwitz
no more wounded knee
no more middle passage
no more slavery
no more Bosnia
no more Rwanda

No more intoxicating ideas of
racial superiority
as we walk toward abundance
we will never forget

the earth
the sea
the children
the people

For we the people will always be arriving
a ceremony of thunder
waking up the earth
opening our eyes to human
monuments.
And it’ll get better
it’ll get better
if we the people work, organize, resist,
come together for peace, racial, social
and sexual justice
it’ll get better
it’ll get better.

From Shake Loose My Skin by Sonia Sanchez, published by Beacon Press. © 1999.