To The Masses (edit based on Tom's corrections and some of his suggestions )

[tectak]

A contribution to the Harlem Renaissance

http://youtu.be/xTEmldzx1xE
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I pray the sweetness of hope
maybe in vain,..may be in vain <<< a possibly vain hope
instead of dishonest love.

Do not – for the best of us all – drown in thatDo not, for the best of reasons, drown in the muddy waters of pain and distress created to suffocate you. Suggested only because waters don't break one, though one can break waters <<< good point. thank you! suffocate is better
muddy waters of pain and distress
created to break you.

Don't tear down the walls
that hold you, too.the "too" is wrong.Unless you mean "you too"; << that is "as well as me". Otherwise it refers to "not breaking walls" as well as "not drowning". If the latter, then "Nor tear down the walls that hold you". Needs looking at.
But if you must,
please, do not waste away
what you don't have yet. Again, this is clumsy in execution and could be simplified to "...do not waste what you do not yet have" <<< agreed. Thank you.

Between despair and delight
I tumble around and the days
steal themselves away.Echo of a cliche in "stealing away" but it is probably a quacking duck. <<< must reconsider. I liked the exprssion. ,-)
The lovers come and go,
leaving me lonely and
politics is not soothing me either,Would be better avoiding the plurality of "politic s" followed by the singular "is", by "Politics do not soothe me, either. <<< yes, singular. Will be fixed.
but still I talk America, To isolate the last line and make it pensive, a semicolon here might help <<< hahaha. It had to come! Ok, I'll smuggle your semicolon into it.
I talk to a beautiful nation.

You are not beautiful by yourself of yourself. "by yourself" means seul. <<< touché1 see: the patois.
but by that basic ideaA "that" too many. Omit it in favour of "the" <<< ok.
that gave birth to you. A nice thought
Just dare to read Jefferson,
to see what could have You cannot say "could" but you can say "may". It is a nuance and a nuisance in one <<< D'accord.
already become of you - insteadNot sure about dash instead. Not sure about dash. Not sure about instead. A dash usually indicates that a little extra information or an aside is coming. Instead, we get "instead". Instead of what? <<< I meant: to see what instead may have become of you.

Hi serge,
I'm getting to like this more but still feel that there are areas of uncertainty of touch. There is an odd lack of deftness which is slightly disconcerting...like a goat walking on a high ridge. You know it will be OK because anthropically it would not be there if it had failed before...yet still I stumble with the goat:

I pray the sweetness of hope
maybe in vain,
instead of dishonest love.

Why would you pray for vain hope? <<< because I and/or the masses are afraid what is hoped for might not come true.
Why is hope sweet, and if you call it thus, why would you wish for none of it? [ <<< I do. see above
Do you mean the "sweetness" is in vain, or the hope is in vain?
Why would you prefer the failure of hope to "dishonest love", surely an oxymoron...and I note that you do not write "a dishonest love". <<< Because I am sceptical of the assumption that love equals truth. You don't have to subscribe to that. Just my life experience. It is less stable and reliable than hope as far as good living is concerned (really just my stance on it.) And also my concept of love differs from that of hope substantially (and in substance: the character of both emotions)

The answers to these, and other questions will, no doubt, be forthcoming.
Best,
tectak

No doubt! ;-)


At least we are starting to get somewhere.

Background: The background to this is a poetico-poltical essay on Senghor (as I already told you earlier). Now I have just the right framework for said essay: 2 pages from an essay by Steven Blakemore ("Burke and the fall of language: the French Revolution as linguistic event." American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies. Spring 17.3 (1984):284-307), 284 - 307), esp. where Blakemore describes Burke's take on the relationship between language usage and depiction of poltical reality. There is a quintessential aphorism of Burke that he stole and transformed from Cicero's Cato Maior de Senectute: Si isti mihi largiantur ut repueriscam, et in eorum cunis vagiam, valde recusem!
He therefore refuses to think in the language of the revolutionaries, because (to quote Burke): "Their tongue betrays them. Their language is in the patois of fraud, in the cant and gibberish of hypocrisy."

Senghor - if subconsciously - seems to have taken this warning by Burke seriously, applying it to French of course, because he turned the revolutionary patois of the Négritude into finest French worthy of the Académie française. According to René Gnalega ("La pensée Senghor et la francophonie." Éthiopiques - Revue negro-africaine de litterature et de philosophie n°69. Hommage à L. S. Senghor 2ème semestre 2002"): "Nous savons que Senghor est l’un des pionniers de la Négritude. Mais nous ne pouvons pas non plus séparer le nom de Senghor de la Francophonie, tant il avait fait corps avec l’idée de francophonie en la défendant avec ferveur et foi. ... Senghor a été aux premières loges, dirons-nous, de la Francophonie."

Your critique: I will comment on your critical remarks inside your comment window quoted in this reply.
A general question (not meant sarcastically. I am just not sure.)
What is not yet your own and what gave birth to you is of course the same. Do I have to spell it out? I hope not. ;-) Though you try to convince me that there is fungibilty in these abstractions you lose your own argument by the injection of "of course". This implicitly indicates that even you consider that the equality of the two abstractions is, of course, less than obvious That is one of the niceties of the English language. It is possible to write one thing and convolutedly indicate another. As soon as I hear "of course" I hear truth on the hoof. So no, I need it spelling out to me...you have had plenty of time to work out an argument!
Best,
tectak
cheers and thank you for reading and commenting!
serge