Such as I’ve been I am I never was
Bad or a good boy ’cept as I was born
Bad like you know the badness in a glass
Of fresh milk if you leave it in the sun
Will be exposed by the blazing inquiry
Bad like the sun won’t make it fresher not
Bad like a white boy’s badness lights the sky
With a strange second sun that dies unnat-
urally from the sky that while it shines
Down on him makes the ground he walks a stage
And when it dies he is himself again
A living Negro never walked a stage
We are the ghosts of who comes after us
And their memorial I bet I was sent
To Limbo ’cause whoever watches was-
n’t sure what good and bad things I had done
But saw the good and bad things millions of
Negroes had done before me on my back
And couldn’t add the figures up and thought
Limbo was good enough and not to dark-
en Heaven darker than Heaven has to be
Or it might be a storm of Negroes in
Heaven I bet whoever watches sees
A storm of Negroes piled high thrashing on
My back whoever watches sees a pile
Of Negroes thinks they’re thrashing ’cause it’s so
Many in one place but the thrashing’s all
The rush of the eye from one black body to
The next and it’s no thrashing in the bod-
ies but the wrong is in the eye I bet
Whoever watches didn’t see I had
A storm of Negroes on my back but it
Was a black cloud like the black clouds I’ve seen
In the far Heaven I’ve seen from Limbo like
The clouds I’ve seen from which I’ve seen stars born
Such storms as are the glory of the dark