Yusef Komunyakaa

Facing It

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of the night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way-the stone lets me go.
I turn that way-I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending, on the light
to make a difference .
I go down the 58,022 names
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

Outside the Blue Nile

"Can you spare seven cents?"
I drop two quarters into
his paper cup.

& he runs after me saying
"Man, I can't take this.
I don't want to get rich."

I notice the Ist Cav. Patch
on his fatigue jacket. He smells like
he slept in a field of mint.

He says that he's Benedict
the Moor. Of course, I've
never heard of the fellow.

Two days later, I spot him
outside Cody's Bookstore
& reach into my pocket,

fingering the pennies. He says,
"I'm not begging today, brother.
I'm just paying penance."

He goes back to scrubbing
the sidewalk with a wirebrush.
His black and white mutt

Stands there, she guards him
at night while he sleeps
under a crown of stars.

I find what I'm looking for
at the Berkeley Library.
He was born in Sicily

On the estate of Chevalier de
Lanza at San Fratello,
the son of African Slaves.

He sold the lumbering oxen
he'd labored for years to buy,
gave the money to the poor,

& followed Father Lanza, pledging
a Lenten vow. After the caves
in the mountains near Palermo,

he went to live in a rocky cell
on Mount pellegrino where
the Duke of Medina-Coeli

visited and built him a chapel.
All the titles at his feet,
Benedict the Moor

rejected. He couldn't
read or write, but recited biblical
passages for days.

Wearing just a few leaves,
he predicted the death
of Princess Bianca,

made the sign of the cross
to give the blind sight. Here
was a man who hid in a thicket

from a crowd's joy.
The Duchess of Montalvo
bowed often before him,

but she never saw his eyes.
"Into thy hands, O Lord,
I command my spirit,"

were his last words. Three months
later. I sit in the Blue Nile
eating with my hands, folding

pieces of spic chicken
into spongy white bread
thin as forgiveness,

knowing that one hand
is sacred & the other is used
to clean oneself with leaves

or clutch a dagger. No one
touched Benedict the Moor's
hands. Not even the Duchess.

They kissed the hem of his habit.
In Palermo, the senate burned
fourteen torches of white wax

in his honor. When I step out
under Berkeley's cool stars,
I see the face I thought

lost in the Oakland hills
when eucalyptus created
an inferno. I walk up

to him, fingering a nickel
& and two pennies. He says,
"Can you spare three cents?"