She must change.
Yes. History must change.
A slow, syncopated
relentless music begins
suggesting her re-entry,
transformed, virginal as she was,
in the Beginning, untouched,
as the Word was spoken,
before the rape which debased her
to be the whore of multitudes...
But we always, somehow, managed
to roar History back onstage
to take another bow,
to justify, to sanctify
the journey until now.
--James Baldwin