Status Updates From Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems

It is dreadful to be
so violently dispersed.
To dare hope for nothing,
and yet dare to hope.
To know that hoping
and not hoping
are both criminal endeavours,
and, yet, to play one’s cards.

Munich, Winter 1973
“How dull time is! How empty—and yet, since I am sitting here, lying here, walking up and down here, waiting, I see that time’s cruel ability to make one wait is time’s reality.”

"Perhaps
one must learn to trust
one's terror:
the holding on
the letting go
is error:
the lightning has no choice,
the whirlwind has one voice."

"In a strange house,
a strange bed
in a strange town,
a very strange me
is waiting for you."

Baldwin' writing always contains a central, steadfast, truth which is sustained even decades after he is gone.