Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session our text was the poem The giver (for Berdis) by James Baldwin, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “The hope of giving is…”

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The giver (for Berdis) by James Baldwin


If the hope of giving
is to love the living,
the giver risks madness
in the act of giving.

Some such lesson I seemed to see
in the faces that surrounded me.

Needy and blind, unhopeful, unlifted,
what gift would give them the gift to be gifted?
          The giver is no less adrift
          than those who are clamouring for the gift.

If they cannot claim it, if it is not there,
if their empty fingers beat the empty air
and the giver goes down on his knees in prayer
knows that all of his giving has been for naught
and that nothing was ever what he thought
and turns in his guilty bed to stare
at the starving multitudes standing there
and rises from bed to curse at heaven,
he must yet understand that to whom much is given
much will be taken, and justly so:
I cannot tell how much I owe.



James Baldwin, "The giver (for Berdis)" from Jimmy’s Blues. 
Copyright © 2014 by The James Baldwin Estate.