Some Days

A lovely poem by James Arthur Baldwin called “Some Days" , he wrote it for Paula

Some Days

Some days worry
some days glad
some days
more than make you mad.
Some days,
some days, more than shine:
when you see what's coming
on down the line!


Some days you say,
oh, not me never - !
Some days you say
bless God forever.
Some days, you say,
curse God, and die
and the day comes when you wrestle
with that lie.
Some days tussle
then some days groan
and some days
don't even leave a bone.
Some days you hassle
all alone.

I don't know, sister,
what I'm saying,
nor do no man,
if he don't be praying.
I know that love is the only answer
and the tight-rope lover
the only dancer.


When the lover come off the rope today,
the net which holds him is how we pray,
and not to God's unknown,
but to each other - :
the falling mortal is our brother!


Some days leave
some days grieve
some days you almost don't believe.
Some days believe you,
some days don't,
some days believe you
and you won't.
Some days worry
some days mad
some days more than make you glad.
Some days, some days,
more than shine,
witnesses,
coming on down the line!

James Arthur Baldwin was born on August 2nd, of 1924 and died December 1st, 1987 at the age of 63.

He was a writer, novelist, poet, playwright, and an activist. When he was young, Baldwin moved to Harlem, New York then live as an expatriate in France for most of his later life and spend some time in Switzerland and Turkey and One of Baldwin famous quotes:

“The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen ... Perhaps it can't be done without the poet, but it certainly can't be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that's all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world.”

I, my self loves to read (in fact I read it repetitively) Baldwin's first collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son appeared in 1955, acknowledged the debt that he, and all black writers of his generation.

Baldwin's lengthy essay Down at the Cross, talked about the uneasy relationship between Christianity and the burgeoning Black Muslim movement.

Baldwin remained strikingly productive, with novels, essays, and other creative works pouring from his typewriter and  Baldwin works along his life are :

·         Go Tell It on the Mountain (semi-autobiographical; 1953)

·         The Amen Corner (play; 1954)

·         Notes of a Native Son (essays; 1955)

·         Giovanni's Room (novel; 1956)

·         Nobody Knows My Name:  (essays; 1961)

·         Another Country (novel; 1962)

·         A Talk to Teachers (essay; 1963)

·         The Fire Next Time (essays; 1963)

·         Blues for Mister Charlie(play; 1964)

·         Going to Meet the Man (stories; 1965)

·         Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (novel; 1968)

·         No Name in the Street (essays; 1972)

·         If Beale Street Could Talk (novel; 1974)

·         The Devil Finds Work (essays; 1976)

·         Just Above My Head (novel; 1979)

·         Jimmy's Blues (poems; 1983)

·         The Evidence of Things Not Seen (essays; 1985)

·         The Price of the Ticket (essays; 1985)

·         Harlem Quartet (novel; 1987)

·         The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings (essays; 2010)

Baldwin expressed his thought about Good things, bad things, angry, sad, love, hate, missing, longing, happiness in daily life which may happened in your times, my time and everyone’s time, in other word this may happen in different time, different place  in life.

James Baldwin's portrayal of black people in Harlem caught up in a dramatic struggle, and of a society confronting inevitable change as He expressed  himself : 

"The gulf between our dream and the realities that we live with is something that we do not understand and do not wish to admit. It is almost as though we were asking that others look at what we want and turn their eyes, as we do, away from what we are. I am not, as I hope is clear, speaking of civil liberties, social equality, etc., where, indeed, a strenuous battle is yet carried on; I am speaking, instead, of a particular shallowness of mind, an intellectual and spiritual laxness, a terror of individual responsibility and a corresponding terror of change. This rigid refusal to look at ourselves may well destroy us, particularly now, since if we cannot understand ourselves we will not be able to understand anything."

Syafuan Gani

Doha, Qatar