"I thought poetry could change everything, could change history and could humanize, and I think that the illusion is very necessary to push poets to be involved and to believe, but now I think that poetry changes only the poet."

"But the Black man by nature is a builder, he is scientific by nature, he’s mathematical by nature. Rhythm is mathematics, harmony is mathematics. It’s balance. And the Black man is balanced. Before you and I came over here, we were so well balanced we could toss something on our head and run with it. You can’t even run with your hat now—you can’t keep it on. Because you lost your balance. You’ve gotten away from yourself. But when you are in tune with yourself, your very nature has harmony, has rhythm, has mathematics. You can build. You don’t even need anybody to teach you how to build. You play music by ear. You dance by how you’re feeling. And you used to build the same way. You have it in you to do it. I know Black brickmasons from the South who have never been to school a day in their life. They throw more bricks together and you don’t know how they learned how to do it, but they know how to do it. When you see one of those other people doing it, they’ve been to school— somebody had to teach them. But nobody teaches you always what you know how to do. It just comes to you. That’s what makes you dangerous. When you come to yourself, a whole lot of other things will start coming to you, and the man knows it."