Truth

 

Paul, can you here me Paul?
Yes, I can hear you.
Sing for us Paul.

A voice cut through the border
and plunged under grinding wastes of water
in an armoured copper cable
to sing in London where people sat cosily jumbled.

His craft spoke of the raging moon
that hung over men swaying in a tree.

His angle on truth butted at equilibrium
and pecked through walls of silence.

It was a song of unrest,
a call to listen

and to look into corners
at bloodied hand prints

that would not be
washed away.

His black listed voice faded
and red, blond and black hairs rose
in a standing ovation.

Between 1955 and 1956 a transatlantic telephone cable was laid with a submarine repeater which was an amplifier that boosted the signal at intervals. This new cable improved the quality of communications and brought prices down. In 1957 Paul Robeson gave a concert to an audience sitting in St. Pancras Town Hall whilst he performed in New York using this new technology. Tickets for the concert sold out in an hour. He was banned from singing outside of America because of his civil rights activism.