Monday's Poetry: (Once Again) "Still I Rise"

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

Last May I used this space to commemorate the dogged determinism and bravery of the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, for standing up to bullies like the National Rifle Association and assorted politicians in the pocket of the NRA.  Many of the young people from that bullet-riddled school were protesting America's lax gun laws - and they were doing it beautifully.  The poem that I chose to mark the power and resistance of their protests was Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise," a true song of inspiration.

Today I am repeating that selection, this time to honor all of the victims of sexual assault who are voluntarily opening their old wounds in the hope of fostering a better America.  These victims are surrendering their privacy and peace in an effort to right old wrongs and insure that their pain and suffering will have not have been in vain.

Many people who considered themselves patriots and good Americans jeered the kids from Parkland and belittled their efforts as being naive and selfish - and many of those same people are now speaking out against the victims of sexual abuse who are ending decades debilitating silence and fear and are finally speaking out about the sexual assaults and human indignities that they endured.

When the disadvantaged and downtrodden speak, we must listen.

Victims are rising and shattering America's once comfortable silence.  A new day is at hand.

Still I Rise
by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.