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Lady Freedom Among Us
don't lower your eyes or stare straight ahead to where you think you ought to be going
don't mutter oh no not another one get a job fly a kite go bury a bone
with her oldfashioned sandals with her leaden skirts with her stained cheeks and whiskers and heaped up trinkets she has risen among us in blunt reproach
she has fitted her hair under a hand-me-down cap and spruced it up with feathers and stars slung over her shoulder she bears the rainbowed layers of charity and murmurs all of you even the least of you
don't cross to the other side of the square don't think another item to fit on a tourist's agenda
consider her drenched gaze her shining brow she who has brought mercy back into the streets and will not retire politely to the potter's field
having assumed the thick skin of this town its gritted exhaust its sunscorch and blear she rests in her weathered plumage bigboned resolute
don't think you can ever forget her don't even try she's not going to budge
no choice but to grant her space crown her with sky for she is one of the many and she is each of us
"Lady Freedom Among Us," from On the Bus With Rosa Parks, by Rita Dove (W.W. Norton & Company). Robert Hass, former U.S. poet laureate, is the author, most recently, of the collection "Sun Under Wood." |
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