Maya Angelou

I learned something about Maya Angelou Today.

She turned 80 on April 4.

Like many of my compatriots I read I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings but I never gave it much thought, but after hearing her interview today on NPR , I want to re-read it with a renewed vigor.

Just her speech is poetry itself. Everything she says seems to have a artistic purpose. While I was listening to the interview she seemed to teach me something new with every statement she said.

The real truth she layed down was a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay called Conscientious Objector

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
business in the Balkans,
many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself:
I will not give him a leg up.

Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,
I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where
the black boy hides in the swamp.

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death;
I am not on his pay-roll.

I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much,
I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me shall you
be overcome.

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.

So Fresh.