My name is Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, and writing and listening to poetry has been a way to understand life. In my younger days, I had so many wonderful experiences with poetry. I remember sitting in a living room in Los Angeles where Maya Angelou barely known at the time was sharing her poetry. I remember sitting with my sister in our shared bedroom, performing for each other the poetry of Nikki Giovanni and Langston Hughes. And I remember sneaking to listen to my album by the last poets. I remember Gil Scott Heron singing his sad poetry, much like the poems of Sylvia Plath, or Robert Bly. And I remember the sun coming in, and a poem settling inside me and a feeling that their poetry could be a way of life.
In this episode, I share with you a poem by Abel miracle, who died in 1986. He is not known as a poet as much as his poetry became the mantra for the legendary Billie Holiday, the greatest jazz singer of our times. Every time Billie Holiday song Strange Fruit she was arrested because the poem, the song, the lyrics, put a spotlight on the torture of the times.
Strange Fruit by Abel Meeropol
Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Meeropol, a Jewish family man from the Bronx of New York turns the difficult into poetry. His pen name, Louis Allan were the names of his children who were still born a tragedy he lived with. He then raised the sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were executed after being accused of espionage with communist Soviet Union. All this to say Meeropol knew deep pain and this is what I love about poetry. We can be stilled by it as it lends itself to reflection on the rawness of life that we find hard to take in.
The fruit hanging on the trees, in the segregated south of this country, where black bodies were not only bodies but people became the fruit of hatred, rooted in the earth, rooted in the tree of life. Black bodies, who were people became bitter crop, became something other than human. The poem is both horrifying and somber. A quiet event that takes place in nature, where trees grow. It is a dark poem that sheds light on the difficult. The hard, the unimaginable pouring out in verse. Sung are unsung. It causes reflection. These bodies once alive, once vibrant, succulent, beautiful fruit prematurely ripen at the hands of those who did not know how precious and rare the fruit was. And this is what makes it poetry. There is still the scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh. In the midst of the horror, the sweet exist. This is life as poetry.
This is life in its rhythm that can make us dance or make us cry. We’re not left to imagine lynching on our own in this poem, just in case we shut it out before the full view. Meeropol brings it close to our face, just as it hit him. Billie Holiday repeats it over and over in song. Marcus Miller a jazz musician renders the songs pain through the voice of a bass clarinet. Lest we forget, as lynching has not been outlawed in this country to this day.
The use of the crow in this poem is not to be missed. Often seen as a dark bad omen, the crow is an important symbol of transformation and change. Being between two worlds—life and death—the transition into something other than being human. The crow is a watchful creature, magical and protective creature, a shapeshifter in the poem. The crow is fed in the death of the lynched and takes the flesh perhaps as a sacrifice, perhaps as a prayer into the sky, into the heavens into another realm.
While there is death in the poem, there is life. And like jazz, the poem has a life of its own. Its energy, its force continues as a long note in risks, crescendos and in a somber clarinet The poem lives as strong as the day it was born. It will never become Strange Fruit. This poem will never hang off a tree and die because it is an eternal mourning song, a dirge for the dead for those wrongful deaths throughout time and it is a call to awaken those of us who are still alive
Strange Fruit by Abel Meeropo
Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop
You have been listening to all life is poetry. The poem Strange Fruit was sourced from the essay, The Strange Story of the Man behind Strange Fruit by Elizabeth Blair of NPR. For further information, please sign up for my newsletter at Zenju.org
