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By Etheridge Knight

                                                        And if sun comes
                                                        How shall we greet him?
                                                                   
—Gwen Brooks

The sun came, Miss Brooks,—
After all the night years.
He came spitting fire from his lips.
And we flipped—We goofed the whole thing.
It looks like our ears were not equipped
For the fierce hammering.


And now the Sun has gone, has bled red,
Weeping behind the hills.
Again the night shadows form.
But beneath the placid face a storm rages.
The rays of Red have pierced the deep, have struck
The core. We cannot sleep.
The shadows sing: Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm.
The darkness ain’t like before.


The Sun came, Miss Brooks.
And we goofed the whole thing.
I think.
(Though ain’t no vision visited my cell.)


Etheridge Knight, "The Sun Came" from The Essential Etheridge Knight. Copyright © 1986 by Etheridge Knight. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260.  Used by permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.

Source: The Essential Etheridge Knight (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986)

  • Living
  • Social Commentaries

Poet Bio

Etheridge Knight
Given the facts of his life, it’s remarkable that Etheridge Knight wrote any poetry. After dropping out of school in Kentucky in the eighth grade and serving as a medical technician in Korea, where he suffered a shrapnel wound, he became addicted to drugs and alcohol, turned to crime, and in 1960 went to prison for robbery. Inspired there by the words of Malcolm X and Langston Hughes, however, he began to write, and by his release in 1968 was a published poet. Along with his wife Sonia Sanchez he became a key figure in the Black Arts Movement, and continued to create original verse that told blunt truths and shared a hard-earned wisdom. See More By This Poet

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