A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us,
clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out to us today, you may stand upon me,
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song. It says,
Come, rest here by my side.
Each of you, a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,
Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the rock were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.
The River sang and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond
to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.
They hear the first and last of
every Tree
Speak to humankind today. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside the River.
Each of you, descendant of some
passed
On traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name, you,
Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of
Other seekers -- desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede, the German, the Eskimo, the Scot,
You the Ashanti,
the Yoruba, the Kru, bought,
Sold, stolen, arriving on the nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am that Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours -- your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, and into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope --
Good morning
Maya
Angelou is perhaps one of the most extraordinary personalities of the twentieth
century. A dancer, an actress, an author, a screenwriter, a poet, she has
multitudinously earned the title of “the fist black woman”. Just to name a few,
she was the first African-American woman to have a non-fiction best-seller with
her autobiographic novel I know why the
Caged Bird Sings which came out in 1969. In 1972 she became the first black
woman to have her screenplay produced, when her drama Georgia
was made into a movie. However, the first “first” goes back to the WWII years,
when she was the first black female cable car conductor. Her latest “first” and
conceivably her most commendable one, yet, was the recitation of her poem “On
the Pulse of Morning” at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. The
audio version of this extraordinary, highly inspirational and utterly eloquent
poem/speech won (very much justified)
Grammy Award for the best spoken word album.
The
pulse of the poem is set in the very first line of the first strophe: A Rock, A River, A Tree, by the iambic
trimester—the closest to the rhythm of the heart. Everything even the
indefinite articles are capitalized to emphasize their importance and the
personification of the subsequent line: hosts
to species long since departed. Such anthropomorphism is carried on, when
the Rock cries out, the Rivers sings and the Tree speaks. The first two lines
of the poem concurrently epitomize the rhetorical device of apposition—the
second element serves as an explanation of the first.
The whole first strophe can be
interpreted as ethos, an attempt to establish credibility as if uttering:
“Look, we have been here since before dinosaurs and mastodons, listen, to what
we have to say to you!”
The appeal to ethics is followed
by pathos in the second stanza as the
Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully … reiterating two verses
down in anaphora: the Rock cries out
to us today… as the Rock urges the humans to rise to their intended
position—only a little lower than the
angels, and stop hiding and crouching face
down in ignorance. The Rock is willing to serve the Human as a pedestal—you may stand upon my back… you may stand
upon me (anaphora)—as the Creator intended for the human to be the crown of
his creation. The song of the River appeals to logic; the attempts of profit
maximization of the businesses has led to exploitation and pollution, it is
time to try something new, not war, but peace, not against nature, but with it.
The Tree, on the other hand, uses more pathos: bought, sold, stolen, arriving on the nightmare praying for a dream.
It invites the listener to come to the riverside: plant yourself beside the River…root yourselves beside me. In this
case the author employs the technique of chremamorphism--
giving characteristics of an object to a person.
Through the personification of natural
objects and bestowing humans with qualities of a plant the author accentuates
the inseparability of mankind, nature and their creator.
However, mankind still needs
to give birth…to the dream of unity. So far humans have built the wall of the
world and have bordered [their] countries, they have led armed struggles for
profit…--desperate for gain, starving for gold, bought, sold, stolen, arriving
on the nightmare praying for a dream. It seems noteworthy that the author never
uses collective terms like humans, people or mankind. Maya Angelou either uses
the direct “you” or very specific categorisations of the seventh stanza (the
Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew et.c, by the way this is the only stanza which is
written in rhymes: Jew—Sioux, Greek—Sheik, Preacher--Teacher) or the metaphor
each of you, descendant of some passed on traveller. This line evokes an image
of a prodigious son, whose Father is patiently waiting for him to come back and
plant and root himself back at home.
Home in this particular case is the Rock, the River, the Tree. Notice,
the Rock is not defined by its color, the River is given no name and the Tree
is not classified either. The ancient Chinese teaching of Feng Shui states that
the energy chi which lives in all things manifests itself in five different
expressions which are also called the Feng Shui elements. These are Water,
Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal.
It seems as though Maya Angelou intentionally leaves out the elements of Fire
and Metal out of her poem. These two elements have been abused by mankind for
the purpose of destruction. It is time to restore the balance. It is time to
come home.
One could argue
that it was the original task of a human—Adam’s job—to give names to all
things. To give names and define their purpose, yes. But the humans got too
caught up in name-calling and forgot their perhaps most important purpose—the “molding of
the dream”. The beginning of any creation is logos—word, image, or a dream.
Full of pathos Maya Angelo urges the listener to give birth again to the dream. Using the device of a metaphor she
persuades women, children, men, [to] take
it into the palms of your hands, mod it into the shape of your most private
need, Sculpt it into the image of your most public self. This is a deeply
philosophical paragraph. The author is using very powerful images/metaphors to
stress the importance of what is being said, for example, “to give birth to the
dream”. As already mentioned, a dream or an idea is the very beginning of
creation, be it a creation of a work of art or conceptualisation of ones own
destiny, the image precedes its materialization. The birth is on one hand the
very beginning of something and on the other hand it is the ultimate act of
creation in terms of materialization. From this perspective the phrase “give
birth to the dream” could be considered a pleonasm as if saying “let us go to
the beginning of the origin”.
In this particular case such pleonasm does not sound redundant, but rather
provides the necessary graveness to the point. And then of course there are
“your most private need” and “your most public self” which are indispensable to
the poem. The “public self” is relatively easy: it is the best version of
ourselves, our super-ego if you will. But what is the most private need? It can
only be speculated that the need that Maya Angelou is talking about is the need
for freedom, not in terms of human rights or civil freedoms, but the essential
need to be free from expectations and prejudices, free from burdens of the past
and free from fear. In fact the word courage is used twice in the poem, History, despite its wrenching pain Cannot be unlived, but if faced With courage, need not be lived again. This is what Maya
Angelou said about the virtue of courage: "Courage
is the most important of all virtues, because without courage, you cannot
practice any of the other virtues consistently."
The last four stanzas contain a
lot of non consecutive anaphors, such as Lift up you eyes,… lift up your
hearts; You may have the courage,… you may have the grace. No less to Midas
than the mendicant, no less to you now than the mastodon then. To look up and
out and upon me, the Rock, the River the Tree, your country… to look up and out
and into your sister’s eyes, and into your brother’s face, your country. The
latter constitutes the climax, the high point of the poem, because now the
listener, who was still all the way down on the ground in the beginning of the
poem, has now risen to the proper for a human heights (only a little lower than
the angels) and can look upon the country which is made up of the Rock, the
River and the Tree (the natural endowment) as well as the brothers and sisters
(the people that populate the country) with a sense of freedom and equality and face the new morning, a new
beginning with hope and optimism. When
Maya Angelo finished, her dream was born in the hearts of all who listened.
