If We Must Die – McKay

Claude McKay, Jamaican-American poet and writer. His poem “If We Must Die” was one of the most important works of the period. Feeling helpless and furious, McKay faked stomach trouble one day and hid in a railroad car toilet to scrawl poetry. In that locked bathroom, he wrote this poem.

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but –fighting back