Letter from a Region in My Mind | Spoken Word (Nik Bear Brown)

Letter from a Region in My Mind | Spoken Word (Nik Bear Brown)

Musinique resident poet and song writer Nik Bear Brown made a spoken word interpretation of James Baldwin's  “Letter from a Region in My Mind,” The New Yorker (Nov. 17, 1962)

“A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1962/11/17/letter-from-a-region-in-my-mind

A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people
It is not necessary that people be wicked
But only that they be spineless

They turn their heads and blink too slow
They hear the screams but never go
They let the lie repeat and swell
And silence does the work of hell

In the region of my mind where rage meets grace
I see a boy with a fire-creased face
He asked, “Must I hate to survive this land?”
And no one reached to take his hand

We tell them kneel, then call them low
We chain the truth and call it snow
We ask them peace, then feed them fear
And wonder why the blood runs near

They handed me a cross and a flag
Said both would save me if I sang
But both were used to build the wall
And neither caught me when I’d fall

Hold your soul, don’t sell it cheap
Even if you cry, don’t let them weep
Even if your voice shakes low
Say the thing they fear you know

I met God in a jailhouse prayer
And doubt in a marble preacher’s glare
And I found myself where I was lost—
Where Blackness bore both crown and cross

No chains can hold the truth for long
And silence never righted wrong
A nation breaks from fear, not fight
A spine must rise to birth the light
Amen

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