BORN TO BLUSH UNSEEN

STILL RISING IN THE BUCKET

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page

50Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;

51Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,

52And froze the genial current of the soul.

53Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

54The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:

55Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

56And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

These lines have always  thrilled me. 
They are from Grey's "Elegy in a Country Church yard."
They lament the dead who had narrow lives and obscure  experiences. The lines assume that
 among the buried rural  dead there are  brilliant and beautiful people who never gained 
recognition in their  lifetimes.


 I tend to agree with these sentiments 
in my own  life the poor  and working class I came to see that there were brilliant and  gorgeous people
among them.  I have described the  talents of  someone like Flavius Boucher, a stone 
mason who became a sculptor.  Most of all my daily  experience of my brilliant mother  
who was forced to leave school after completing grade 8. I did not meet anyone smarter
 than  her until I met the celebrated poet and translator --Richard Howard.

  Sometimes I express my understanding of the  specialness and uniqueness of every  person with
the saying "Genius is like a bird it can alight on any branch.".  But when I say this in
front of a person of privilege I often receive the answer:: "No,  the cream always  rises to the top"
What they mean by that sentiment is that everyone is in the right place. They like to see themselves as the  CREAM and  people on the bottom as  something that cannot rise--curdled milk perhaps.
This idea that we are already where we should be in life is unacceptable to me.

Think of Maya Angelou's words  "STILL I RISE,"

Still I Rise

BY MAYA ANGELOU

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.