Poems by Maya Angelou
A Brave and Startling Truth
by Maya Angelou
We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.
Love costs all we are and will ever be.
Yet it is only love which sets us free.
A Brave and Startling Truth.
It is possible and imperative that we discover
A brave and startling truth.
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
And without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonders of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
Miscellany
Other poems by Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s siz …
But when I start to tell them,
The eye follows, the land
Slips upward, creases down, forms
The gentle buttocks of a young
A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
We were entwined in red rings
Of blood and loneliness before
The first snows fell
Curtains forcing their will
against the wind,
children sleep,
She came home running
back to the mothering blackness
deep in the smothering blackness
There is no warning rattle at the door
nor heavy feet to stomp the foyer boards.
Safe in the dark prison, I know that
We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
The free bird leaps
on the back of the win
and floats downstream
The night has been long,
The wound has been deep,
The pit has been dark,
