Poem for Angela

Writer Miguel F. Ramirez created this poem in tribute to Angela Davis.
Translation:
For Eva Angela Davis

Beautiful Black woman, skin of the wind, lashes white faces.
Another Adam, beautifully enraged, founds another presence.

I, a tourist—no less a part of this place—
Learned from the colonial city
(once ruled by these, their masters until yesterday)

Of the man with wiry hair and earthy feet,
And I come, asking about him, of new pupil:
Black Prometheus with unshackled ankles,
With a clenched fist striking at sickly blood,
With a word—a seed—fertilizing the Bird-Race.

Only yesterday, walking along waxed sidewalks,
Eyes scraping skyscrapers that boast above:
To the beast with long beards and golden smog breath,
Ancient golden calf we still knelt before only yesterday.
I, a foreigner, ask with native longing:

Where is Watts?

They answer me: Wall Street.
Where Martin, Malcolm are! Where the M's are!

The tour does not include the Ghetto.
Where Angela’s 27 lives are!

The Statue of Liberty—
Where the Adam of the Black Panthers is!

Where the dead, and the living dead are!
Vietnam is a commitment to progress.

Returning, only yesterday, with the fury of the Black Wind,
Here in my land, needing another land,
Buried under white shovels and long beards,
Searching for another presence, another essence.

January 1971
Miguel Flores Ramírez