But it was on that bright afternoon

that I knew I was leaving France.

I could, simply, no longer sit around

in Paris discussing the Algerian

and the black American problem.

Everybody else was paying their dues,

and it was time I went home and paid mine.

I had at last come home.

If there was, in this, some illusion,

there was also much truth.

In the years in Paris,

I had never been homesick for anything American—

neither waffles, ice cream, hot dogs,

baseball, majorettes, movies,

nor the Empire State Building, nor Coney Island,

nor the Statue of Liberty, nor the Daily News,

nor Times Square.

All of these things had passed out of me.

They might never have existed,

and it made absolutely no difference to me

if I never saw them again.

But I had missed my brothers and sisters,

and my mother.

They made a difference.

I wanted to be able to see them,

and to see their children.

I hoped that they wouldn’t forget me.

I missed Harlem Sunday mornings

and fried chicken and biscuits,

I missed the music,

I missed the style—

that style possessed by no other people in the world.

I missed the way the dark face closes,

the way dark eyes watch,

and the way, when a dark face opens,

a light seems to go everywhere.

I missed, in short, my connections,

missed the life which had produced me

and nourished me and paid for me.

Now, though I was a stranger,

I was home.