Howl of Claude McKay*

(#Poem)

the air brings the howl of claude mckay

like gunshots ripping, hissing

through the forest’s darkness

like a spear stabbing, piercing

through the wall of consciousness

splitting the skull of cowardice!

“if we must die,” howls claude mckay

let it not be like hogs

hunted and penned in an inglorious spot

while round us bark

the mad and hungry dogs

making their mock at our ancestral lot.”

“if we must die

o let us nobly die

so that our precious blood

may not be shed in vain

then even the monsters we defy

shall be constrained to honor us though dead.”

indeed, comrades-in-arms

let us be brave

in our decades of struggle

for the sacred emancipation

of the downtrodden-exploited class

in the la tierra pobreza

of our bloody, nightly dreams.

yes, comrades-in-arms

let us be brave, howls claude mckay

though we are outnumbered, says he,

show them we are brave…

for their thousand blows, yells claude mckay

deal them one death-blow

what though before us

lies the open grave

“like men, we will face,” shouts claude mckay

“the murderous, cowardly pack

“pressed to the wall, dying

“but fighting back!”

———————-# modified English version by Mark Angeles of my original SIGAW NI CLAUDE MCKAY in Filipino.

Claude McKay, a Jamaican, became the associate editor of The Liberator and The Masses, and wrote poems and a novel. He became popular when Sir Winston Churchill, during the II World War, read in the British Parliament McKay’s sonnet “If We Must Die.”