Marvin Gaye Sings “The Star Spangled Banner”
NBA All Star Game, 13 February 1983
This is about Love. About Pain.
About how sweet it is,
the Real Thing.
Direct.
Unrequited.
One-sided.
Can I get a witness?
But he’s known One More Heartache.
He knows all about that.
About Love trapped in the blood no getaway
Even after you’ve gone:
Leave her
My mistake
Leave town
Was to love You
Leave the country.
When did You
Stop loving me…?
Marvin sings.
If this world were mine
He knows words can lie, conceal
Heard it through
The grapevine
Makes this song a promissory note,
Makes (Midnight) love to
The Dream
Hushed, sensual,
Slow healing.
His tribe Last of the Believers
Makes me wanna holler
The only Real Americans left
The way They do my life
Yearning.
Marvin sings. Caresses words.
The nation, fickle,
Seduced by the familiar:
A distant lover persuaded to do right
That’s the way love is
gently
Before she gives up her Secret,
Releases Freedom,
A river, soft as her kiss
All I need to get by
Then strong and sudden, true,
Says, Let’s Get It…
With bombs bursting in air
Can I get a WIT-ness?
By Dawn’s
Early
Light
(Do you know the meaning of
“Been Sanctified?”)
Reginald Harris is the author of 10 Tongues (Three Conditions Press, 2001), and recent work has appeared in The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South and Poems Against War: Ars Poetica.
