Lenard D. Moore. Gathering at the Crossroads

African American Review, Winter, 2007 by Hiromi Furukawa

Lenard D. Moore. Gathering at the Crossroads

[Haiku by Lenard D. Moore, Photographs by

Eugene B. Redmond]. Winchester, VA: Red

Moon P, 2003.12 pp. $7.00.

In, autumn last year, we once again recalled the "gathering at the crossroad," this time in an event called the Millions More Movement that gathered in the Mall of Washington, DC, on October 15, 2005. This movement was intended to solve various problems African Americans faced, including urgent issues such as coping with the victims of the Hurricane Katrina and the Iraqi War. The gathering was also to commemorate the historic Million Man March initiated by Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, a decade earlier on October 16, 1995. Although this male-only event caused controversy, it became the biggest gathering in the history of African Americans' liberation movements for freedom, justice and equality. This book is a compact album of the big day with Lenard Moore's haiku interpreting each snapshot taken by Eugene Redmond, a noted poet himself.

Haiku is the shortest form of Japanese verse, composed usually of 17 syllables in three lines: five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second and five syllables in the third line. Because a haiku is limited in its length, it must achieve its effect by expressing a sense of harmony between life and nature, sometimes indicative of Zen philosophy, as shown in Basho's haiku:

Aki fukaki           Autumn is deepening:
Tonari wa nani o     My neighbor,
Suru hito zo         How does he live, I wonder?

Here, as autumn approaches winter, the poet's observations of nature and the life of the neighbor, a stranger, are linked with deeper nuance than the mere connection represents. Perhaps, Basho as an intermediary is expressing a deeper interest in his fellow human beings.

Interestingly, Richard Wright in his last years in Paris composed over four thousand haiku. Before his death in 1960, Wright selected 817 pieces; these were brought out as Haiku: This Other World, edited with Notes and Afterword by Yoshinobu Hakutani and Robert L. Tener (New York: Arcade, 1998). In its introduction Wright's daughter Julia notes: "A form of poetry which links seasons of the soul with nature's cycle of moods enabled him to reach out to the black boy part of himself still stranded in a South that continued to live in his dreams. With the haiku, a self-nurturing could begin, albeit so close to his own death" (xi).

Wright's haiku are mostly based on the traditional style both in verse form, and linkage of nature and philosophy, while Moore's deviate from the time-honored style. Retaining the essence of haiku composition, the latter's treatment is modernistic. Moore spun 10 pieces of haiku in sequence of the photographs of the day taken early in the morning to the evening. The photo on the first page is of the scene in a chartered bus. There we find this "hokku" (another term for haiku used in Basho's time):

   gathering place
   bus after bus idling
   as the sun comes up

On the next page the snapshot focuses on a father and his small son among the crowd descended from the buses:

   autumn dawn
   a father briefing his son
   in the parking lot

And then comes the picture of an enormous mass of participants walking toward the gathering place. Above them we hear:

   the cadenced footsteps
   of one million black men
   a warm fall day

Next, followed by a photograph of black people basking in the autumn sunshine that cast multileveled shadows on the plaza:

   sun plaza:
   one million shadows darken
   foot by foot

Now comes the highlight scene of the day, as Louis Farrakhan on the platform concludes his speech, showing his pledge encased in a frame:

   the speaker's hand
   bends the microphone down
   deepening autumn

Here we detect a suppressed feeling and wording characteristic of Japanese traditional haiku.

The next two pages contain several snapshots at various moments of the participants: young and old, a man on the wheelchair, women in uniform, and so on. Among them we find portraits of noted comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, rap artist MC Hammer, and Pulitzer Prize novelist James Alan McPherson, who is said to be enchanted with things Japanese.

Turning the page, we find other photographs of men, some in suit, others in casual clothing on the stage. Here Moore stresses the beauty of brotherhood:

   on the stage
   a line of brothers locks arms
   autumn sunshine

Next a picture of a building. On its wall appears the sign "My Brother's Place." There Moore imagines:

   on the marble bench
   a zipped-up windbreaker
   autumn wind

Now we see a photograph of musicians beating the drums in the autumnal wind:

   lingering wind
   the chant of black men goes on
   this autumn day

There is a saying in Japan: "the autumnal sun drops like a wooden bucket into the well," which means the sun in autumn, called fall in the US, sinks fast. We see in the photograph a few people sit scattered on the rows of empty chairs in the plaza:

   darkening day
   a row of folding chairs
   left in the plaza