“Still I Rise”
A poem by the late great American acclaimed poet; storyteller; fry cook; street-car conductor; professional dancer; prostitute and lesbian madam; film director; nightclub performer; civil rights activist; playwright; autobiographer and professor of American studies at Wake Forest University, Dr Maya Angelou, [Latter born Marguerite Annie Johnson].
“Still I Rise”
You may write me down in history,
With your bitter, twisted lies.
You may tread me in the very dirt,
But still, like dust, I rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk as if I have 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 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 take it so hard,
‘Just cause I laugh as if I have gold mines,
Diggin’in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your lies,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But like life, I rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise,
That I dance as if I have diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame,
I rise.
Up from a past rooted in pain,
I rise.
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling bearing in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak miraculously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the hope and the dream of the slave.
And so, I rise.
END.
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