This poem is about two indentured servants, on White and one Black, in early America. They are like brothers until a series of negative forces split them apart.

A Tale of Two Brothers

Many stories I have, many folks call them fables.
But hear this story of a man at a table,
As another man looks out from a doorway
In a cold, dead silence with nothing to say.
Are they strangers that despise each other?
No I say, they happen to brothers,
Brothers who rarely cross each others way,
Brothers as different as night and day.

Hear this story that many don’t want to hear,
Of a beginning of bliss, not one of tears.
In a garden like heaven vast and broad,
Where Brother Night and Brother Day communed with God.
They grew in diverse knowledge and wisdom,
Keeping alive the ancient Solomonic tradition.
And after a youth of divine things,
Brother Night and Brother Day left the garden to be kings.

Meditate on this story of power on high,
As Brother Night and Brother Day built towers to the sky.
Basking each morning in radiance so true,
Till new lands they discovered and their kingdoms they outgrew.
Casting down their golden crowns like holy elders of the light,
Brother Night and Brother Day went off to seek a different life.

So I tell on this story with glee,
Of kings now servants fervently searching for opportunity.
They traveled together across the new land,
Until they found opportunity in the hands of the Man.
The Man was cruel, the Man was cold,
Men came to him free and slaves they were sold.
In the midst of all this the brothers stayed together and toiled the Man’s land,
Reaping crops watered with their sweat and blood.
Only to see the fruits of their labors snatched by this minister of the gospel of greed.

Hear oh people of days gone by,
Like a tempest in the sea under a stormy sky.
In these days cold became their hearts,
And Brother Night and Brother Day were soon apart.
No more was the alliance of the images of God,
For now upon the predestined union did The Man trod;
For he had gotten his victory
And poisoned the mind of a man once free,
Giving brother day the aristocracy.

High in mansions in this new land
Brother Day ate the fruits sown by Brother Night’s hand.
He forgot the days in the garden of his past,
He forgot the God who had held him steadfast.
He forgot Brother Night who loved him most,
He forgot their wives mutilated at the whipping post.
And there he sat in luxuries of this world,
Subject to the will of the diabolical god who usurps the hearts of men.

Listen to this story of two brothers in a nation
Caught within a sacrilegious transubstantiation,
Where men become cattle and cattle become men
To justify an unjust pagan theology.
And Brother Night fights for his humanity
While Brother Day seeks economic efficiency.
Sitting in the abode of shadows enlightened truth comes to an oppressed prophet singing Louis Armstrong:

(Sing this part )
I see skies of blue
And clouds of white,
The bright blessed day,
The dark sacred night,
And I think to myself……

O sacred night, and blessed day co–exist…co–mingle in your Makers delight.
Overcome the abomination birthed from the lies of false prophets and the fathers of a nation.
Overcome together and swim through infested waters.
Overcome and restore what was torn asunder.
Overcome and sing with the voice of thunder.
Overcome and be free of the conditioning of a pagan deity,
Who under a cloak of conformity feeds you destructive, stereotypical, fallacies.

And so Brother Night sings “We shall overcome”,
But he shall not overcome, until Brother Day comes on over.
And they remember those days……
Those ancient days……
When……they….. were……
Brothers

This poem is © Scotty J. Williams