ModPo 2013 #34 Humanity in Sonnet: On McKay's "If We Must Die"

Image of the Red Summer of 1919 from northamarillonow.

If We Must Die
BY CLAUDE MCKAY

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
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I liked how there was the constant question in the video discussion of "who is McKay addressing?" It definitely was not enough to identify his fellow persecuted African Americans. Indeed, this was not their language, the high Shakespearean sonnet. Rather, he is addressing those who are influenced by the long tradition of English, all the way back to the source. I liked that anecdote that Winston Churchill possibly used this very poem during World War 2. It is the kind of rousing rhetoric that he would actually use.

I also liked how it was mentioned that "if you destroy us...you also destroy this." That word again: this. There was a reason that McKay chose this form. Racism destroys the best of what is human and, in this poem, it destroys the humanity that created the Shakespearean sonnet. I guess McKay had to choose something that would reflect what is considered art and thus, the traditional sonnet. Destroy this and destroy human attainments in history.

There may have been other ways to express this sentiment, I agree. "If We Must Die" is not very specific in its cause. Dying "like hogs" does not just necessarily refer to racist riots or the Red Summer of 1919...it refers to any kind of war, actually, which reduces the "enemy" to a hog to be butchered or a mad dog. There is a senselessness to it in the end. Both sides are animals which have shrugged off their humanity. But I don't fault McKay for his choice. He felt that his cause was something universal, something of a call to not just comrades but to humanity. It might be in the same vein as Dylan's "Do not go gentle into that good night" which also used a traditional form. I can understand why the poet, faced with dissonance and senseless death, would turn towards the formal harmony of a sonnet. The rhymes and the cadence begs to be remembered.

Bread

Bread
by Justine C. Tajonera

My son asks me if we can visit a bakery
so we can see how bread is made.
"There are other kinds of bread, Mama, right?"
I assure him that there are. There are deliciously
heavy breads like brioche, baked with lots of
eggs and butter. There are grainy breads and
there are breads that are flat for a lack of yeast.
And I remember dismantling the word "bread."
I was on the way to an aunt's home, not much
older than my own son. I took apart the word,
saying it over and over again, marveling at how
it only stood for the thing that I ate, that left
crumbs on the plate. How could this be separate
and yet one with the thing of sustenance?
And who chose that it start with a "b" and end
with a "d?" And why does the "r" sound and feel
like the texture of the bread? At some point I felt
I did not understand the word.
And then time intervened.

So, today, for a few moments, I glimpsed
once again, how the words are the promises and
the things themselves, how the words are the story,
and the remembrance, and the life itself.

My Clothes In My Son's Embrace

By Justine C. Tajonera

I came home
to my son
one night,
already sleeping,
clutching a framed
picture of his dad
and me,
his face
buried in a dress
that I had tossed
aside
that morning.

My clothes
in my son's
embrace
hold depths
of meaning
I will never quite
fathom.

Nothing I throw
aside
is worthless,
nothing I say
is insignificant.

(Dec. 2, 2009)

The Living and The Dead

By Justine C. Tajonera

A red string through
time
connects us all.
The string I hold
will end where my
son knots his own
string.

The string stretches on
through a clearing,
drawn taut
with the wind
tugging our
lengths.

There is no point
to the strings
or reasons
why they end
or begin.

But we hold on
tightly
anyway,
knowing that
the string
we hold
will end.

Even though the
length of the string
will never alter
the fact

that a red string
through time

connects us all.

(Oct. 29, 2009)

Image from escalasilver.com