Take Me, Alf, To The Ballgame

“Award,” Ray Durem (black poet, activist, and member of the Communist Party), in Dudley Randall’s “The Black Poets”

Well, old spy

looks like I

led you down some pretty blind alleys,

took you on several trips to Mexico,

fishing in the high Sierras,

jazz at the Philharmonic.

You've watched me all your life,

I've clothed your wife,

put your two sons through college.

what good has it done?

the sun keeps rising every morning.

ever see me buy an Assistant President?

or close a school?

or lend money to Trujillo?

ever catch me rigging airplane prices?

I bought some after-hours whiskey in L.A.

but the Chief got his pay.

I ain't killed no Koreans or fourteen-year-old boys in Mississippi.

neither did I bomb Guatemala,

or lend guns to shoot Algerians.

I admit I took a Negro child

to a white rest room in Texas,

Ariadne

Thumbkin and Other Stories

Text Version by W. K. Holmes

Artist : Barbara C. Freeman (1906-1999)

Blackie & Son Limited