Bury Me in a Free Land

I have been reading to Asher at bedtime from an anthology of African-American poetry.  We are about halfway through but I'm not sure I'm going to top one of the very first poems in the book, "Bury Me in a Free Land," by Frances Harper (who also wrote "Minnie's Sacrifice," which I read to Asher last year):

Make me a grave where'er you will,

In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;

Make it among earth's humblest graves,

But not in a land where men are slaves.

I could not rest if around my grave

I heard the steps of a trembling slave;

His shadow above my silent tomb

Would make it a place of fearful gloom.

I could not rest if I heard the tread

Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,

And the mother's shriek of wild despair

Rise like a curse on the trembling air.

I could not sleep if I saw the lash

Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,

And I saw her babes torn from her breast,

Like trembling doves from their parent nest.

I'd shudder and start if I heard the bay

Of bloodhounds seizing their human prey,

And I heard the captive plead in vain

As they bound afresh his galling chain.

If I saw young girls from their mother's arms

Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,

My eye would flash with a mournful flame,

My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.

I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might

Can rob no man of his dearest right;

My rest shall be calm in any grave

Where none can call his brother a slave.

I ask no monument, proud and high,

To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;

All that my yearning spirit craves,

Is bury me not in a land of slaves.

I am very unread in American poetry, let alone African-American poetry, so this book has been a revelation for me.  There is something about the platform of poetry that enables the deep, painful, and yet expectant emotion of the early African-American experience.

I have not seen or experienced what Frances Harper did, nor would I have the talent to express it so beautifully or sorrowfully.  Yet I too wrestle with the same inner conflict, of loving and hoping for so great a nation even as its soil is stained with the blood of injustice and violence.