An Agony. As Now.

The title of the poem suggests both the immediacy of the pain and the pain of the present. The fragmented punctuation foreshadows the speaker’s fractured identity.

The poem’s simple language makes the speaker’s emotions more accessible, while the abstraction makes the poem’s meaning more difficult to understand. Baraka’s poems often place a heavy emphasis on emotion in the hopes of spurring radical political change. Here, the poem’s anger might drive the reader to reflect on oppression and their own potential racial biases.

The poem’s opening line uses simple words to describe the conceit of the poem: the speaker is trapped “inside someone / who hates” him (Lines 1-2). This line establishes the terror and anger that will be described in the poem. The use of the first-person pronoun “I” (Line 1) at first suggests a literal meaning, that the speaker is physically trapped, yet the rest of the stanza reveals how this poem actually focuses on the psychological experience of the soul. The speaker uses physical sensations of seeing, smelling, and loving to describe the psychological experience. The speaker can look, but only “out from his eyes” (Line 3). The speaker can smell, but he smells “fouled tunes” (Line 4) from the body’s mouth. He can love, but only the “wretched women” (Line 6) that the body chooses. The poem’s word choice, like “hates” (Line 2), “fouled” (Line 4), and “wretched” (Line 6), all contribute to the mood of rage and degradation.

The speaker imagines the body as a mechanical object. The eyes are “[s]lits in the metal” (Line 7). The flesh is “hard” (Line 9). This is contrasted with the life of the soul with its eyes “turning” (Line 8) inside. Even erotic touch is mechanical, as others are “rubbed against” (Line 10) the body in a passive sexual act “without shadow, or voice, or meaning” (Line 11). With the soul separated from the body, the body is unable to feel or create meaning.

The speaker attributes his entrapment to a world that preys on innocence as if it were a “weapon” (Line 13). The body is an immobile “enclosure” (Line 12), suggesting that the speaker is seen as wild, since he is a Black man, and he is trapped inside by an outside force. The unclosed parentheses contradict this containment, as it leaves the thought open and free. While the enclosure is a flesh prison, “innocence is a weapon” (Line 13) against this torture and an “abstraction” (Line 14) of the self. The speaker distinguishes between the touch of the body and the touch of the soul and the past self. But the fragmented punctuation could also suggest that the touch is an abstraction, separate from the soul. The touch is not the speaker’s or “yours” (Line 15), referring to the speaker’s past self. This use of “you” (Line 15) could be “the soul” (Line 15) the speaker “had and / abandoned” (Lines 15-16). The younger self conformed to the pressures of society and had his “enemies carry [him] as a dead man” (Line 17), leading to the current entrapment. In his youthful ignorance, he was “blind” (Line 16) to the dangers present. The enemies enact some sort of ritual because “he is beautiful, or pitied” (Line 18). The nature of this ritual is ambiguous, though it requires a sacrifice from the speaker.

The fourth stanza begins with the word “It” (Line 19), which refers to the “Touch” noted in Line 14. Touch can be painful, and the speaker outlines two types of pain in this stanza. It could be “As now” (Line 19) when “all his / flesh hurts” (Lines 19-20) the speaker. The second pain describes an unknown past event where an unnamed woman “ran away from” (Line 21) the speaker into the forest. While not specific, this image is eerie and threatening while also describing an abandonment.

The fifth stanza begins by describing the pain of mental decline as his mind “spiraled whirled against the / sun” (Lines 24-25). Yet his mind also reaches impossible heights that are “higher than even old men though / God would be” (Lines 25-26). The break in this line suggests that the speaker’s mind flew higher than old men, who represent white American history and expectations, and that his mind ascended to heaven where God is. This reference to white standards is connected to the canon in the image of the man reading old books. The pages of these books are “withered yellow” (Line 28), suggesting that they are old. Yet the speaker notes that these pages “were never / beautiful” (Lines 28-29). Baraka was always critical of the white literary canon and sought to reject white standards of beauty and culture. The “yes” (Line 29) of the poem refers to Black artists agreeing to uphold the status quo by working within white culture’s definition of art. Only the “lost soul” (line 29) of one of those poets would see the “practiced” (Line 30) beauty of white art that creates the images of nature in “wet sentences” (Line 31).

The speaker focuses his attention on the upholders of these standards, “the cold men in their gale” (Line 32). He describes how the men get “Ecstasy” from collecting “Flesh / or soul” or “The yes” (Lines 32-33). In some sort of ritual, they “chant” (Line 34) at the speaker’s heels to “corrupt” (Line 35) the soul. By participating in this culture, the Black soul is damaged and oppressed, contributing to the separation of self and body. The foreboding description of blustery winds contrasts with the artificial sun of the white artist’s description, suggesting the rage against the system the speaker expresses in his art. He also criticizes America as the place “Where the God is a self” (Line 36), suggesting that selfishness and pride drive many Americans to look out for themselves first. The “answer moves too quickly” (Line 35), leaving no easy solution for the speaker or reader.

The speaker returns to more directly describing his current experience. He echoes the second stanza, reminding the reader of the slits for eyes when he describes “[c]old air blow[ing] through narrow blind eyes” (Line 37). The sun described as hitting the metal flesh earlier has now heated the flesh until it is “white hot metal” (Line 38). This extreme sensation means that nothing can live inside. The “bony skeleton” (Line 39) of the body cannot actually feel, but simply “recognize[s]” (Line 40) the words.

The speaker recognizes that this understanding of the definition does not equate to experiencing this emotion. The heat means that nothing inside the body can love. Instead, the self “burns” (Line 43). Separated from the body, the self cannot express himself and can only be “that thing [that] / screams” (Lines 44-45). This final image is pessimistic and hopeless. There is no solution proposed. The soul and body are left separated, with the soul experiencing perpetual torture without relief.