Celebrations

Copyright © 2006 by Maya Angelou

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R
ANDOM
H
ouse
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

THE FOLLOWING POEMS HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED:
“On the Pulse of Morning,” “A Brave and Startling Truth,”
“When Great Trees Fall,” “Amazing Peace,” and “Mother.”

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Angelou, Maya.
Celebrations: rituals of peace and prayer / Maya Angelou.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-77792-8
I. Title
PS3551.N464C45 2006
811′.54—dc22 2006048645

www.atrandom.com

v3.1

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Other Books by This Author

About the Author

A Rock, a River, a Tree,

Hosts to species long since departed,

Marked the mastodon.

The dinosaur, who left dry tokens

Of their sojourn here

On our planet floor.

Any broad alarm of their hastening doom

Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,

Come, you may stand upon my back

And face your distant destiny,

But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than

The angels, have crouched too long in

The bruising darkness,

Have lain too long

Face down in ignorance,

Your mouths spilling words

Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,

But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,

A River sings a beautiful song,

Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,

Delicate and strangely made, proud,

Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit

Have left collars of waste upon

My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,

If you will study war no more. Come,

Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs

The Creator gave to me when I and the

Tree and the stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your

Brow and when you yet knew you still

Knew nothing.

The River sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to

The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,

The African and Native American, the Sioux,

The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,

The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,

The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,

The Privileged, the Homeless, the Teacher.

They hear. They all hear

The speaking of the Tree.

Today, the first and last of every Tree

Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.

Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some

Passed-on traveler, has been paid for.

You who gave me my first name, you

Pawnee, Apache, and Seneca, you

Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then,

Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of

Other seekers—desperate for gain,

Starving for gold.

You the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Italian, the Scot,

You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought,

Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare,

Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the Tree planted by the River,

Which will not be moved.

I the Rock, I the River, I the Tree

I am yours—your Passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need

For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,

Cannot be unlived, and if faced

With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon

The day breaking for you.

Give birth again

To the dream.

Women, children, men,

Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most

Private need. Sculpt it into

The image of your most public self.

Lift up your hearts.

Each new hour holds new chances

For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever

To fear, yoked eternally

To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,

Offering you space to place new steps of change.

Here, on the pulse of this fine day,

You may have the courage

To look up and out upon me, the

Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day

You may have the grace to look up, and out

And into your sister’s eyes, into

Your brother’s face, your country,

And say simply,

Very simply,

With hope,

Good morning.

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet

Traveling through casual space

Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns

To a destination where all signs tell us

It is possible and imperative that we learn

A brave and startling truth.

And when we come to it

To the day of peacemaking

When we release our fingers

From fists of hostility

When we come to it

When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate

And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean

When battlefields and coliseum

No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters

Up with the bruised and bloody grass

To lay them in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches

The screaming racket in the temples have ceased

When the pennants are waving gaily

When the banners of the world tremble

Stoutly in a good, clean breeze

When we come to it

When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders

And our children can dress their dolls in flags of truce

When land mines of death have been removed

And the aged can walk into evenings of peace

When religious ritual is not perfumed

By the incense of burning flesh

And childhood dreams are not kicked awake

By nightmares of sexual abuse

When we come to it

Then we will confess that not the Pyramids

With their stones set in mysterious perfection

Nor the Gardens of Babylon

Hanging as eternal beauty

In our collective memory

Not the Grand Canyon

Kindled into delicious color

By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe

Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji

Stretching to the Rising Sun

Neither Father Amazon nor Mother

Mississippi

who, without favor,

Nurtures all creatures in their depths and on their shores

These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it

We, this people, on this minuscule globe

Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade, and the dagger

Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace

We, this people, on this mote of matter

In whose mouths abide cankerous words

Which challenge our very existence

Yet out of those same mouths

Can come songs of such exquisite sweetness

That the heart falters in its labor

And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet

Whose hands can strike with such abandon

That, in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living

Yet those same hands can touch with such healing,

irresistible tenderness,

That the haughty neck is happy to bow

And the proud back is glad to bend

Out of such chaos, of such contradiction

We learn that we are neither devils nor divines