For the brand of your hand, casts a pall o’er the land, that enshadows the gleam of the eye,
My sons, deftly sapped of the brawn-hood of man, self- rejected and impotent stand,
My daughters, unhaloed, unhonored, undone, feed the lust of a dominant land.
I would not remember, yet could not forget, how the
hearts beating true to your own, You’ve tortured, and wounded, and filtered their blood
’till a budding Hegira has blown.
Unstrange is the pathway to Calvary’s hill, which I
wend in my dumb agony, Up its perilous height, in the pale morning light, to
dissever my own from the tree.
And so I’m away, where the sky-line of day sets the
arch of its rainbow afar, To the land of the north, where the symbol of worth
sets the broad gates of combat ajar!
Analysis: The titular poem in this volume begins by addressing America’s desire for dominance. It references slavery/the Southern United States and how it used black men and women to build economic power. In the line, “My daughters, unhaloed, unhonored, undone, feed the lust of a dominant land,” the word “lust” refers to the general desire for power and slaveowners’ sexual desire for black women. “You’ve tortured, and wounded, and filtered their blood ’till a budding Hegira has blown” refers to the oppression that black people experienced during and after slavery in the American South and how it prompted black people to move north. A Hegira is the journey that the Prophet Muhammad made from Mecca to Medina in order to escape persecution. This journey was a northward migration, and the journey that many black people made from the southern United States to the northern United States was also a northward migration. In this poem, the migration could refer to the northward journey to escape slavery or the post-slavery journey to escape the racial violence in the south.