I look at the world
From awakening eyes in a black face—
And this is what I see:
This fenced-off narrow space   
Assigned to me.

I look then at the silly walls
Through dark eyes in a dark face—
And this is what I know:
That all these walls oppression builds
Will have to go!

I look at my own body   
With eyes no longer blind—
And I see that my own hands can make
The world that’s in my mind.
Then let us hurry, comrades,
The road to find.

Langston Hughes, “I look at the world” from (New Haven: Beinecke Library, Yale University,)
Source: Poetry (January 2009)

I love this poem.  I read it for the first time just yesterday in the New York Times magazine.  According to the Times the poem was discovered by accident.  A rare-books cataloger found it scribbled in the pages of a book entitled “An Anthology of Revolutionary Poetry.”  Revolution indeed is advocated by the poet.  I cannot help but think that nations with apartheid inscribed from their very founding, a condition of injustice doubly embedded by a capitalist ethos are in the cross hairs of these words.

Our own White House was built by slave labor.  America has written a check, has offered arms and material to prop up many regimes we thought to bend to our interests.  It is a long list.  Cuba, Vietnam, Iraq, and more than one country in central America would be included.  And now the check book has been out to underwrite Israel’s attempt to eradicate the Palestinian population of Gaza.

With eyes no longer blind, let us see the world that our hands can make!  Let’s hurry to find that road.