For National Poetry Month, a poem that, for me, meets Emily Dickinson's criterion of a good poem: it takes the top of my head off every time I read it. This is Cyrus Cassells' "Soul Make a Path Through Shouting," from his book of poems with the same title. It's dedicated to Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, the African-American students who caused a national crisis in 1957 just because they wanted to go to school:
Thick at the schoolgate are the ones
Rage has twisted
Into minotaurs, harpies
Relentlessly swift;
So you must walk past the pincers,
The swaying horns,
Sister, sister,
Straight through the gusts
Of fear and fury,
Straight through;
Where are you going?
I'm just going to school.
Here we go to meet
The hydra-headed day,
Here we go to meet
The maelstrom -
Can my voice be an angel-on-the-spot,
An Amen corner?
Can my voice take you there,
Gallant girl with a notebook,
Up, up from the shadows of gallows trees
To the other shore:
A globe bathed in light,
A chalkboard blooming with equations -
I have never seen the likes of you,
Pioneer in dark glasses:
You won't show the mob your eyes,
But I know your gaze,
Steady-on-the-North-Star, burning -
With their jerry-rigged faith,
Their spear of the American flag,
How could they dare to believe
You're someone sacred?:
Nigger, burr-headed girl,
Where are you going?
I'm just going to school.
