Afro Images Poem by David Cooper

(For Natalie)

She was dark and fine
with large African sunsets
for eyes.
You could see the whole world
in her eyes.
Her eyes reflected joy;
they mirrored the pain—
centuries of lash and lack
and bloodhounds and canebrakes and
cotton fields at dawn.
She saw landscapes of white cotton bolls,
cypresses and bayous,
red clay and sky high pines.

Her eyes tightened at her birthpains;
the giant Robeson and red-headed Malcolm
and the thunder-throated Martin
and all the unborn sons and daughters
who will spring from their bones.
her eyes were prophets of past and present;
eons etched on her brown pupils.
But look deeper, much deeper—
for the future of our people is written
in this young girl’s eyes.