How the young attempt and are broken
Differs from age to age
We were brown free girls
Love singing beneath their skin
Sun in their hair in their eyes
Sun their fortune
The taste of their young boys’ manhood
Swelling like birds in their mouths.
In a careless season of power
We wept out our terrible promise
Now these are the children we try
For temptations that wear our face
And who came back from the latched cities of falsehood
Warning—the road to Nowhere is slippery with our blood
Warning—You need not drink the river to get home
For we purchased bridges with our mothers’ bloody gold
We are more than kin who come to share
Not blood, but the bloodiness of failure.
How the young are tempted and betrayed
To slaughter or conformity
Is a turn of the mirror
Time’s question only.