"tonite" by E.E. Cummings:
(i dreamed God took away
the world,
when the niggers were asleep
and threw it into Hell and
the white and the brown and the yellow
people all turned suddenlyblack but God looked down
and the niggers were laughing at Him.
And He laughed Himself
and told the snow "I
want you to go down into
nigger street, and put that fire out because I have called off "The
Last Day.")
The full poem is above, with an accompanying essay by James Dempsey here. Ebert gets straight with those who question whether this poem makes Cummings racist:
So here is what it means: God created the races, and threw them and their world into Hell, and they all became the same race and laughed at him for making them different and God got the joke and laughed at himself and called off Judgement Day. That's what it means. … E. E. Cummings wrote a lovely poem against racism.
The Dish 