Amiri Baraka- Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands


When I read this poem it made me think of the depression that many people go through everyday. A lot of people feel the way that the narrator does. Like he feels like the ground opens up and covers him up. It made me think of people when they are overwhelmed and the feeling of being trapped by it.  And the detail of the sound the wind makes when he is running to for bus, I can place myself in those shoes, because it relates to me. How sometimes that feeling of being in a hurry and how your senses seem to be capture everything else around you, even when you are hurrying somewhere. And when he counts the stars, and all the holes in the sky where stars use to be, but they just holes now.
But there is always hope to me i  think because at the end he finds his daughter praying, he finds something good in the world even through his depression he has a light still. Even though he feels like the ground will ungulf him, and how he cant see the stars that use to be there, at least his daughter is, at least he is able to have something to keep him going.