THE SONG OF SMOKE

By W.E.B. Du Bois

I am the Smoke King!
I am Black!
I am swinging in the sky,
I am wringing worlds awry:
I am the thought of the throbbing mills,
I am the soul of the soul-toil kills,
Wraith of the ripple of the trading rills;
Up I'm curling from the sod,
I am whirling home to God;
I am the Smoke King
I am Black.

I am the Smoke King,
I am Black!
I am wreathing broken hearts
I am sheathing love's light darts
Insipration of iron times
Wedding the toil of toiling climes,
Shedding the blood of bloodless crimes—
Lurid lowering 'mid the blue,
Torrid towering toward the true,
I am the Smoke King,
I am Black.

I am the Smoke King,
I am Black!
I am darkening with song,
I am hearkening to wrong!
I will be Black as Blackness can—
The blacker the mantle, the mightier the man!
For Blackness was ancient ere whiteness began.
I am daubing God in night,
I am swabbing Hell in white;
I am the Smoke King,
I am Black!