Of black and white black white black people
This line marks the climax of the poem where the speaker shifts from describing natural beauty such as flowers, trees, and rain, to describing humanity. The alternating syntax of “white black white black” emphasizes the intermixing of races in this futuristic ideal world.
And I’m gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hand
And red clay earth hands in it
Here the speaker elaborates on the colors of nature by adding the skin color of people joining hands in harmony. The inclusion of colors both from nature and from people reveals how people are also a part of nature and should be in harmony with it as well.
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a colored composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama
The final lines of the poem repeat the first line of the poem, emphasizing once more how the speaker desires to create music in the future. However, by the end of the poem the audience learns that daybreak in Alabama describes more than the natural beauty of sunrise, but also, in a metaphorical sense, a social change where there is harmony among all people. To create harmony for this composer is a multi-sensory and multi-faceted endeavor. He will create sonic harmony through music, visual harmony through colors, and social harmony through kindness.
