Thanks for that, Ralph.
I'd like to post the poem I originally started with, by Countee Cullen.
So much in so few lines, and so much to say about it, but probably best to let the poem speak for itself:
***
Incident
Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.'
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.
—Countee Cullen
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