Summary
The river addresses humanity as a cluster of alienated individuals whose desire for self-preservation is stymied by constant war. Wars have damaged the river by leaving it littered with debris, but the river invites humanity to choose peace over war and to rest on its banks. The river offers to teach people nature's old songs from before human war and animosity arose. The speaker explains that people feel an urge to listen to nature and sit beside the river, regardless of who they are. The poem lists a variety of types of people who hear this calling: people of all kinds of religions, races, sexualities, cultures, and classes. The river describes these listeners' ancestors. First, the poem lists Native American tribes who gave the river its name before being forced away from their homes. The poem then lists groups who arrived in the United States by force through slavery and forced migration, as well as those who immigrated in search of new opportunities. The tree next to the river invites all these people and their descendants to take root. The speaker explains that, while history is painful, it has to be faced head-on so that it is not relived.
Analysis
The poem's first several stanzas were focused on establishing a setting and introducing us to the dialogue between nature and humanity. These middle stanzas deepen that dynamic, addressing the poem's most important themes: war, slavery, human oppression, and environmental destruction. According to the rock, tree, and river, who collectively form a single unified voice, this brutality isn't the natural state of the world. Instead, it's a relatively recent but powerful phenomenon, and a deeply unnatural one. Angelou makes contemporary American individualism seem not just unpleasant but ridiculous. The image of isolated people turned against one another, expending their energy on preserving themselves and hurting others, makes competition and individualism seem wildly inefficient and frivolous. Meanwhile, war and oppression are depicted as not just unnatural but anti-natural, in the sense that they bring about harm to the environment. The river offers two contrasting images of how humans can relate to the body of water. In one scenario, humans dump the waste and litter created by war into the river. In another scenario, humans are peaceful and use the river as a place to rest and sing. In other words, Angelou suggests, it is far easier and more reasonable to be at peace with nature and with other people than it is to harm them.
The ease and instinctiveness of listening to nature is also, Angelou suggests, universal. Much of the middle section of the poem is devoted to lists of the different types of people who live or have lived in the United States. These lists aren't comprehensive; they don't include every single demographic or type who has played a role in American history. However, the array of people listed is intended to hint at the diversity of Angelou's intended audience. Because this poem was written for a presidential inauguration, the wide array of groups described here allows audiences to feel included by relating to or identifying with at least one, if not more, of the groups Angelou mentions. The poem does not explicitly mention the United States, instead describing this diverse range of people in terms of their relationship to the landscape—the tree, the river, and the rock. Some of the people mentioned in the list are indigenous: these groups have known the landscape longest and most intimately, but have also been exiled from it. Some of the groups came to the landscape unwillingly, through slavery, servitude, or force, but now have formed a relationship to it. Others came to know the landscape from a place of hope, by voluntarily immigrating. In other words, these people and their descendants have very different relationships to the natural world. But the most important thing, Angelou asserts, is to recover that closeness to nature and to the past, rather than trying to rush ahead into the future and forget the complexity of history.
