‘…in those wine- and urine stained
hallways, something in me wonder-
ed. What will happen to all that black
beauty?’
                                  James Baldwin

Out of those hallways
crossing the street to blue
astonished eyes

as though by first light
made visible, dark
presences slowly
focus

revelation of
tulip blacks, delicate
browns, proportion
of heavy lip to bevelled
temple bone

                    The mind
of a fair man at the intersection
jars
at the entering of this
beauty, filing

endlessly through his blue
blinking eyes into
the world within him