Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison

Now the Senator could hear a voice quietly calling, Bliss? You hear me, Bliss? but was too weary to respond. His lips refused to answer, his throat throbbed with unstated things, the words starting up from deep within his mind and lodging there. He could not make them sound, and he thought, The circuit is out; I'm working with cables like those of Donelson's lights, scenes go dark and there's only a sputtering along the wire.

Yet his mind flowed dreamily and deep behind the purple shadows, welling from depths of time he had forgot, one short-lived self mysteriously surviving all the years and turns of face. Once I broke the string I whirled, I scudded the high places, bruised against tree-tops and building spires, snagged here and there for a time but always sailing. But once spring turned me turtle, I tried to sing-that's a part Daddy Hickman doesn't know. The old bliss still clung to me; childlike beneath my restlessness, stubborn. Liked the flight of birds then; cardinals streaking red across the fields, red wings on blackbirds and whistling quail at eveningtide. And metal-blue dragonflies and ladybirds in the dust, and catleaps in the sun. Black cat poised on hind feet like a boxer, waiting to receive a squirt of milk from a cow's teat, the milk white on the whiskers and the flash of small pink tongue.