Poetry

Anne

Since I left you, Anne,
I have seen nothing but you.
Every day
Has been your face,
And every night your hand,
And every road
Your voice calling me.
And every rock and every flower and tree
Has been a touch of you.
Nowhere
Have I seen anything else but you,
Anne.

In the Mist of the Moon

In the mist of the moon I saw you,
O, Nanette,
And you were lovelier than the moon.
You were darkness,
And the body of darkness.
And light,
And the body of light.
In the mist of the moon I saw you,
Dark Nanette.

Song

Rocks and the firm roots of trees.
The rising shafts of mountains.
Something strong to put my hands on.

Sing, O Lord Jesus!
Song is a strong thing.
I heard my mother singing when you hurt her:

Gonna ride in ma chariot some day.

The branches rise from the firm roots of trees.
The mountains rise from the solid lap of earth.
The waves rise from the dead weight of sea.

Sing, O black mother!
Song is a strong thing.

For an Indian Screen

Clutching at trees and clawing rocks
And panting and climbing
Until he reached the top
A tiger in India
Surmounted a cliff one day
When the hunters were behind him
And his lair was far away.
A black and golden tiger
Climbed a red cliff’s side
And men in black and golden gowns
Sought the tiger’s hide.

O, splendid, supple animal:
Against the cliff’s red face:
A picture for an Indian screen
Woven in silks of subtle sheen
And broidered in yellow lace,
A picture for an Indian screen
As a prince’s gift to some ebony queen
In a far-off land like a fairy scene.

Day

Where most surely comes a day
When all the sweets you’ve gourged
Will turn your stomach sick
And all the friends you’ve loved
Will go away
And every gold swift hour
Will be an hour of pain
And every sun-filled cloud
A cloud of rain
And even the withered flowers
Will lose their long-held faint perfume
And you alone will be with you
In that last room⁠—
Only your single selves together
Facing a single doom.

Passing Love

Because you are to me a song
I must not sing you overlong.

Because you are to me a prayer
I cannot say you everywhere.

Because you are to me a rose
You will not stay when summer goes.

Lincoln Monument

(Washington)

Let’s go see old Abe
Sitting in the marble and the moonlight,
Sitting lonely in the marble and the moonlight,
Quiet for ten thousand centuries, old Abe.
Quiet for a million, million centuries.
Quiet⁠—and yet a voice forever
Against the timeless walls of time,
Old Abe.

Song for a Dark Girl

Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)
They hung my black young lover
To a cross roads tree.

Way Down South in Dixie
(Bruised body high in air)
I asked the white Lord Jesus
What was the use of prayer.

Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)
Love is a naked shadow
On a gnarled and naked tree.

Gal’s Cry for a Dying Lover

Heard de owl a hootin’,
Knowed somebody’s ’bout to die.
Heard de owl a hootin’,
Knowed somebody’s ’bout to die.
Put ma head un’neath de kiver,
Started in to moan an’ cry.

Hound dawg’s barkin’
Means he’s gonna leave this world.
Hound dawg’s barkin’
Means he’s gonna leave this world.
O, Lawd have mercy
On a po’ black girl.

Black an’ ugly
But he sho do treat me kind.
I’m black an’ ugly
But he sho do treat me kind.
High-in-heaben Jesus,
Please don’t take this man o’ mine.

Desire

Desire to us
Was like a double death.
Swift dying
Of our mingled breath,
Evaporation
Of an unknown strange perfume
Between us quickly
In a naked room.

Bulwark

You were the last bulwark of my dreams,
And now you, too, have tumbled down into the dust.
You, too, are no more than a broken lie.
Something
came between us
green and slimy
like sickly laughter
and a bowl was broken
from which
we could not drink thereafter
and we turned around
and threw
the shattered bits
upon the ground
and went our separate ways
into the town
and a clock
somewhere in a tower
boomed out slowly
hour after hour
a great cracked
broken sound.
You were the last bulwark of my dreams,
And now you, too, have tumbled down.

Wise Men

Let me become dead eyed
Like a fish⁠—
I’m sure then I’d be wise
For all the wise men I’ve seen
Have had dead eyes.

Let me learn to fit all things
Into law and rule:
I’d be the proper person then
To teach a school.

Poem for Youth

Raindrops
On the crumbling walls
Of tradition,
Sunlight
Across mouldy pits
Of yesterday.

Oh,
Wise old men,
What do you say
About the fiddles
And the jazz
And the loud Hey! Hey!
About the dancing girls,
And the laughing boys,
And the brilliant lights,
And the blaring joys,
The firecracker days
And the nights⁠—
Love-toys?

Staid old men,
What do you say
About sun-filled rain
Drowning yesterday?

The Naughty Child

The naughty child
Who ventured to go cut flowers,
Fell into the mill-pond
And was drowned.
But the good children all
Are living yet,
Nice folks now
In a very nice town.

Mona

She lived in sinful happiness
And died in pain,
But she danced in sunshine
And laughed in rain.

She went one summer morning
When flowers spread the plain
But she told my mother
She was coming back again.

The old folks made a coffin
And hid her deep in earth.
Seems like she said: My body
Brings new birth.

For sure there grew flowers
And tall young trees
And sturdy weeds and grasses
To sway in the breeze.

And sure she lived in growing things
With no pain
And laughed in sunshine
And danced in rain.

Ma Lord

Ma Lord ain’t no stuck up man.
Ma Lord, he ain’t proud.
When he goes a walkin’
He gives me his hand.
You ma friend, he ’lowed.

Ma Lord knows what it is to work.
He knows how to pray.
Ma Lord’s life was trouble, too,
Trouble ever day.

Ma Lord ain’t no stuck up man.
He’s a friend o’ mine.
When he went to heaben,
His soul like fire,
He tole me I was gwine.
He said, Sho you’ll come wid me
An’ be ma friend through eternity.

Tapestry

Men who ride strange wild horses
Down dangerous glens and glades,
Men who draw keen sharp swords,
Toledo or Damascus blades,
Men who swear and laugh