2 poems by James Baldwin you should read immediately

Here are two poems excerpted from Jimmy’s Blues and Other Poems, published by Beacon Press.

“Amen” by James Baldwin

No, I don’t feel death coming.

I feel death going:

having thrown up his hands,

for the moment.

I feel like I know him

better than I did.

Those arms held me,

for a while,

and, when we meet again,

there will be that secret knowledge

between us.

“Munich, Winter 1973 (for Y.S.)” by James Baldwin

In a strange house,

a strange bed

in a strange town,

a very strange me

is waiting for you.

Now

it is very early in the morning.

The silence is loud.

The baby is walking about

with his foaming bottle,

making strange sounds

and deciding, after all,

to be my friend.

You

arrive tonight.

How dull time is!

How empty—and yet,

since I am sitting here,

lying here,

walking up and down here,

waiting,

I see

that time’s cruel ability

to make one wait

is time’s reality.

I see your hair

which I call red.

I lie here in this bed.

Someone teased me once,

a friend of ours—

saying that I saw your hair red

because I was not thinking

of the hair on your head.

Someone also told me,

a long time ago:

my father said to me,

It is a terrible thing,

son,

to fall into the hands of the living God.

Now,

I know what he was saying.

I could not have seen red

before finding myself

in this strange, this waiting bed.

Nor had my naked eye suggested

Excerpted from . Copyright 2014.

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