Martin in Me

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Three times I take his words into my mouth 
and make them thunder from my tongue. 
His final speech will not remain unsung in me. 

My students’ faces leak a trace of anomie. 
A few have questions in their eyes; 
confusion clouds the skies of history. 

No longer young that April night—Memphis 
1968—he saw the Promised Land, but knew 
he couldn’t enter through hate’s veil that cloaked the city. 

I know somehow that only when it’s dark enough, 
you see the stars, he said. Something is happening 
in our world—masses of people rising up. 

He asked those Memphis ministers to risk 
their lives for garbage men. The issue is injustice. 
We’re going to march again; we’ve got to march again. 

We don’t need bricks or bottles. He spoke of Lincoln, 
Christ, and Aristotle, but said we could not stop there. 
In this world, it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. 

Within the week, a bigot’s bullet laid him down. 
His cry remains the same: We will be free. I speak 
his words and feel the Martin in me.