Maya Angelou: RIP

What a passing into ancestry! What a life, what legacy! Adeiu, Maya Angelou. Rare is such grace, and rarer still such intellect enhanced by such eloquence. I truly hope that everyone will find a way to hear you in your own words. The image I'm including is from 1991. She is dancing with fellow poet Amiri Baraka, who passed into ancestry in January of this year.

SYMPATHY

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!

~ PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR, 1872 - 1906