Today’s poem has been chosen and introduced by Head of English, Mr Fernandes.

It is by Gwendolyn Brooks. She was born in 1917, and she grew up in Chicago. Brooks was thirteen when her first published poem, ‘Eventide’, appeared in American Childhood (hello, FHS Year 8s). By theage of seventeen (hello, LVI), she had published a number of poems in Chicago Defender, a newspaper aimed at Chicago’s black population. In 1949, she became the first ever black writer to win the Pulitzer Prize with her poetry collection Annie Allen. At the age of sixty-eight (no ‘hellos’ this time), she became the first black woman to be appointed as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress.

In ‘truth’, Brooks’ speaker asks how we might ‘greet’ the personified, long-awaited ‘sun’. She worries that we might ‘dread him’, even ‘fear him’, because we have spent ‘so lengthy a/ Session with shade’. Brooks wrote at length about racial discrimination in the United States, but her ‘sun’ is also broad – we can use it to reflect any sense of longed-for change that we have ‘wept for’ and ‘prayed’ for, through thelengthy and evocative ‘night-years’.

Like all of our greatest artists, Brooks leaves us with questions. When change comes, what state will we be in? Will we yearn for ‘the dear thick shelter’ and ‘snug unawareness’ of our old lives, or will we step into the ‘shimmering morning’, jumping up into action when we hear the ‘fierce hammering/[…] Hard on the door’?

To help us answer this question, here is a suggestion: let us take our ideas and pour them into this poem. Let us take ownership of it. Let us question it and see if fits for us. We might like to do this with all works of art. They are ours to do with what we wish. Brooks gives us this freedom by omitting the capital ‘T’ in her title. She does not suggest that she is delivering an unchanging ‘capital T truth’. She asks us questions.

The questions seem to multiply, the deeper we look. How are we questioning the ‘capital T truth’? What is our ‘sun’ of change? Is it an age of equality for all? The end of lockdown? The end of online lessons? Something smaller? Something bigger? The choice, as ever, is ours.

truth

And if sun comes

How shall we greet him?

Shall we not dread him,

Shall we not fear him

After so lengthy a

Session with shade?

Though we have wept for him,

Though we have prayed

All through the night-years—

What if we wake one shimmering morning to

Hear the fierce hammering

Of his firm knuckles

Hard on the door?

Shall we not shudder?—

Shall we not flee

Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter

Of the familiar

Propitious haze?

Sweet is it, sweet is it

To sleep in the coolness

Of snug unawareness.

The dark hangs heavily

Over the eyes.

By Gwendolyn Brooks