"Old Ghost Appears Before the Un-American Committee and Refuses to Remove His Hat"
        —title of the Langston Hughes article
          of a fictional appearance before HUAC

He is there before HUAC unsummoned, Old Ghost, a fiction,
but Old Ghost is Paul Robeson because he won't take off his hat.
Robeson visited battlefronts in the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet
Union. He supported Henry A. Wallace for president. Was labeled
a Commie by the FBI. Jackie Robinson has called Robeson "silly"—

one Negro passing judgment on another: the oldest Jim Crow trick.
Whatever drives some men to endure then explain that endurance
as the face of communal will, Robeson has that. And a fine voice.
A voice like any pick-your-holy-story angel, a story of America
he, Paul Leroy Robeson, discovers he belongs to. The dreams
of his dead sprout in spring. Flower as resistance to Injustice,
a dance of light shored against the Not-so-grand. He has

nothing to explain, an explanation the denouement to
keeping your hat on: the raised middle finger to Power.

Tweet
Copyright © 2019 Roy Bentley All rights reserved
from New Letters
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission