Huey Newton and the other Panthers stand around a sandbox
where six single children with little red books
and brush-and-ink sing and dance the tale
of Mao's Long March to the Yellow Sea,
of Ling Ch'ung the Leopard-Headed as he clobbers
the robber-barons in their mountain lair.
Far from the rain-dust streets of Oakland,
where a cop kills a kid for trailing a patrol car
and militants in black berets sip bitter dogs
and rap to Fanshen, Ho Chi Minh, Bakunin,
here, as the old Confucian proverb goes,
all men are brothers, at least for an afternoon.
Just this side of the treeless hills, a sinewy mimosa
stiffens in the breeze and bursts its feathery
aromatic seed upon a yard of oversized propellers.
From where we are now, it's easy to see how
the image of the vanguard of the revolution--
to be bad-assed, beautiful, and black in America--
has been quashed, though for a moment
in this other world, it seems that Huey is happy
and the children are thankful for the visit.

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