Le sporting-club de Monte Carlo (for Lena Horne) by James Baldwin

Le sporting-club de Monte Carlo (for Lena Horne)

by: James Baldwin

The lady is a tramp

        a camp

        a lamp

The lady is a sight

        a might

        a light

the lady devastated

an alley or two

reverberated through the valley

which leads to me, and you

the lady is the apple

of God's eye:

He's cool enough about it

but He tends to strut a little

when she passes by

the lady is a wonder

daughter of the thunder

smashing cages

legislating rages

with the voice of ages

singing us through.

James Baldwin at his home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, southern France, on November 6, 1979. (Ralph Gatti / AFP/Getty Images)

This poem is a reflection of the past, but one that is still reverberating through our lives all these years later.  Although both the poet and the singer for whom this poem was written are gone, they both represent an era in American history of social change--especially for black men and women.

What I love about this poem is how he creates a Lena Horne that is mythologized in these words--simple words, that energize and give us that sense of musical quality for which she was known.  And while she may seem simple--those first lines of labels evocative of the way society tries to find easy ways to categorize people, she becomes something more as the lines progress.  She becomes a commonality, her voice, her songs, and her rebellion against societal norms bringing us together in our own voices, our ears as we listen to her, and our own rebellions.  She becomes a symbol--of greatness, and then of mythology, those last lines evocative of older stories we learned as children:

the lady is a wonder

daughter of the thunder

 And not so simple after all, she refused to accept segregation.  She worked with civil rights leaders of the day to seek laws and protections naming black people as equal.  And then...and then, she was this phenomenal singer--a voice of change in so many ways.

This poem, to me, speaks of the power of people to change the world--to change us.  Baldwin and Horne's courage gives us vision; their voices give us life.  And I find Baldwin's beautiful paean to Lena Horne also a paean to all those who strive to make their visions a reality.  As he tried to do in his own life, as she tried to do in hers, this poem invites us to create that human vision of greatness through the work that we do--to reach out to the people around us to make the world a better and more soulful place of hope.