"Because cowards attack bycommittee"

[Poem of Commitment]

Because cowards attack
bycommittee
and others kill with bullets
while some numb bynumbers
bleeding the body and the language
of a child . . . Whowould behold the colorings of a cloud
and legislate itsshadows
legislate its shine?
Or confront a cataract of rain
and seek to interdict its speed
and suffocate itssound?
Or disappear the trees behind a nomenclature
no oneknows by heart?
Or count the syllables that invoke
the motherof my tongue?
Or say the game goes the wayof thewindAnd the wind blows the way
of the ones who make
andbreak
the rules? . . .

because
because
because as far as I can tell
less than a thousand children playing
in the garden of a thousand flowers
means the broken neck
of birds

I commit my body and my language . . .

And throughout her ardent, abbreviated life, she did.

June Jordan