Alice Walker: "While Love Is Unfashionable"

for Mel

While love is unfashionable
let us live
unfashionably.
Seeing the world
a complex ball
in small hands;
love our blackest garment.
Let us be poor
in all but truth, and courage
handed down
by the old spirits.
Let us be intimate with
ancestral ghosts
and music
of the undead.

While love is dangerous
let us walk bareheaded
beside the great River.
Let us gather blossoms under fire.



"While Love Is Unfashionable" by Alice Walker, from Revolutionary Petunias. © Mariner Books, 1973.

Image credit: "Working Together on Planet Earth," by Alan Crosthwaite (originally color).