Legacy
Legacy - meaning Summary
Wandering Black Nocturnal Life
Baraka's poem sketches nocturnal scenes of Black bodies in a Southern town—sleeping, stumbling, dancing, squatting—caught between survival and ritualized movement. The speaker follows anonymous people traveling "towards the moon or the shadows of houses," suggesting migration, memory, and a pulled-toward mythic "sea." The poem evokes a communal legacy of motion and song, a mix of hardship and continuity that links place, history, and collective memory.
Read Complete AnalysesIn the south, sleeping against the drugstore, growling under the trucks and stoves, stumbling through and over the cluttered eyes of early mysterious night. Frowning drunk waving moving a hand or lash. Dancing kneeling reaching out, letting a hand rest in shadows. Squatting to drink or pee. Stretching to climb pulling themselves onto horses near where there was sea (the old songs lead you to believe). Riding out from this town, to another, where it is also black. Down a road where people are asleep. Towards the moon or the shadows of houses. Towards the songs' pretended sea.
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