Speaker/Amiri Baraka/"Roi"
Given that the poem is a kind of self-reflection, the most important character is Baraka himself. He describes how his soul is undergoing transformative changes and that he expresses the changes publicly, even though he has no way of predicting them. At the end of the poem, he alludes back to himself: "When they say 'It is Roi / who is dead. I wonder / who will they mean?" Roi is a nickname stemming from his former name, "LeRoi Jones".
"They"
The only other character alluded to in the poem is the ambiguous "they" who say "It is Roi who is dead" at the end of the poem. It is implied that the pronoun refers to those to whom Baraka "publically redefin[ed] each change in his soul". Baraka questions which version of himself and his soul will be remembered by the public after he is gone.
