Jay Wright

[JTolle]

Born in New Mexico in 1935, Jay Wright is a critically lauded African-American poet, playwright, and essayist. (A brief) Wiki page.

Wright's intense study of theology has been essential to the creation of a body of poetry rich in complex historical, cultural, linguistic, and spiritual knowledge and force, with particular focus on African mythologies and religion.

from "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting" (The Homecoming Singer, 1971)

...The older people linger
in the freshly lit night,
not in a hurry to enter,
having been in the battle of voices
far too long, knowing that the night
will stretch and end only
when some new voice rises
in ecstasy, or deceit, only
when some arrogant youth
comes cringing down front,
screaming about sin, begging
the indifferent faced women
for a hand, for a touch,
for a kiss, for help,
for forgiveness, for being young
and untouched by the grace
of pain, innocent of the insoluble
mysteries of being black
and sinned against, black
and sinning in the compliant cities.
What do you know
about some corpulent theologian,
sitting under his lamp,
his clammy face wet,
his stomach trying to give up
the taste of a moderate wine,
kissing God away with a labored
toss of his pain?

[...]

But Christ will come,
feeling injured, having gone
where beds were busy without him,
having seen pimps cane their number running boys,
the televisions flicker over heaped bodies,
having heard some disheveled man
shout down an empty street, where women
slither in plastic boots, toward light,
their eyes dilated and empty;
will come like a tired workman
and sit on a creaky bench,
in hope, in fear, wanting to be pleased again,
so anxious that his hands move,
his head tilts for any lost accent.