“There might be someone you love, some one you
wanted to be with, and then, found your self
with, there were such things, such lives and
lovers. I am like that sometimes, I think, some
distant romantic wrapped in music. I wanted to know
myself, and found that was a lifetime's work, the
twists and zig zags, dips and turns, all could
disorient you, that you were no longer you but
somebody else masquerading as yourself's desire.
Rain could come. The sky grow light. It could even be
twilight, in a foreign town. Where you walked under
far noises of invisible worlds. But when you remember
all of your faces, blown now gone forever in the wind,
you'll see that you were always wanting to be you,
you were always wanting to know and love yourself, and you
found a few faces, a few names, that extended your life
into other lives, and as time marches, hours, days, decades
dance, you'll find your hand in someone else's hand, you'll
hear yourself thinking about some person other than you
and then look up and yes there will be some other person
some closeness and echoed tenderness, that makes us more than dots
under the far away, that make us more than split seconds of
light”
―
Amiri Baraka,
S O S: Poems, 1961-2013
