AfroPoets Famous Writers

"As My Blood Was Drawn"


As my blood was drawn,
as my bones were scanned,
the People of Bahá
were savaged were slain;


skeletons were gleaning
famine fields,
horrors multiplying
like cancer cells.


World I have loved,
so lovingly hated,
is it your evil
that has invaded
my body's world?


As surgeons put
me to the knife,
innocents
were sacrificed.


I woke from a death
as exiles drowned.
I called on the veiled
irradiant One.


As spreading oilslicks
burned the seas,
the doctors confirmed
metastasis.


World I have loved
and loving hated,
is it your sickness
luxuriating
in my body's world?


In dreams of death
I call upon
the irradiant veiled
terrible One.

Written by Robert Hayden (1913-1980)

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