"Frederick Douglass," by Robert Hayden

Reader’s Note: Frederick Douglass was born sometime in February of 1818 (his enslaver didn’t record the exact date). In honor of his birthday, here’s a poetic tribute from Robert Hayden, one of the great poets of the twentieth century, and the first African American to hold the office later known as the U.S. Poet Laureate (he served in that role from 1976-78).

And by the way: “diastole” and “systole” are the two phases in a heartbeat, the first when the heart relaxes and fills with blood, the second when it contracts and moves the blood along. Diastole, systole; diastole, systole; diastole, systole…

“Frederick Douglass”

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues' rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

+ Robert Hayden