I was of three minds

Just like moons and like suns

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Weakened by my soulful cries?

I know noble accents   

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise

And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin leggings, a Louisianian or Georgian,

Icicles filled the long window   

With barbaric glass.  

they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.

Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

You may write me down in history

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest

I rise

I rise

I rise.