Zuni ny Poem by Dieter M Gräf

1

toward the Swept
or Barren Place


Audubon Ballroom, almost at
4000 Broadway, colored terra
cotta façade, fake with foxes (hanging
for the owner, Fox) , Death's Argo over everything,
its sooth
saying, so-called wood spoke Present
belongs to the martyrs.
Malcolm Little, Detroit Red, X, El Hajj Malik Shabbaz
- blue
is what the eyes of the former priest of Temple 7 turned,
they kept on discoloring.
Sun bathed (professionally) ,
Africans dubbed him albino, white devils interviewed,
fellow blacks sieved him, here.
Every finger, every toe, every eye, every woe
sometimes goes his own way,
so that nothing is left on Personality place.
His stories - - - torpedos against history,
but even more bizarre.
The orderly linear hand
writing, prison school, for years he wrote
down everything the emissary babbled: Yakub
the Macrocephalic who bred the whites, the mother
and baby airplanes of the implacable in
the decisive attack - - - - Armageddon.
Having to in
vent oneself, bravely, with underdog poses; warrior, avoided the deed. 39,
actor
charisma (replaced on the autobiography
by actor Denzel Washington) ,
always friendly,
if mikes were off;
otherwise: we hope that every day
another plane falls from the sky (a wire from God) - -


Ran down to Harlem,
to Sylvia's, Malcolm X Boulevard,
to Hotel Teresa, he and Fidel Castro
sitting on the shabby bed, Khrushchev days,
such young dudes white America trembled at - -

- - Malcolm X Boulevard, Harlem, New York:
there at Martin Luther King, Jr. playground,
gladly asked a proud man for directions,

2

toward
the Home of the Day

toward
the Home of the Waters

3

toward the Place
of the Beautiful Red

Translated by Andrew Shields