Part 2

Now I who dreamed before I died to shoot one shaft Of courage from a warped and crooked bow, Stand utterly forsaken, stripped of that small craft I had, watching with you all prowess go.

_At a Parting_

Let us not turn for this aside to die, Crying a lover may not be a friend. Our grief is vast enough without that lie; All stories may not boast a happy end. Love was a flower, sweet, and flowers fade; Love was a fairy tale; these have their close. The endless chronicle was never made, Nor, save in dreams, the ever-scented rose.

Seeing them dim in passion’s diadem, Our rubies that were bright that now are dull, Let them not fade without their requiem, How they were red one time and beautiful, And how the heart where once a ruby bled May live, yet bear that mark till it is dead.

_Dictum_

Yea, I have put thee from me utterly, And they who plead thy cause do plead in vain; Window and door are bolted, never key From any ore shall cozen them again. This is my regal justice: banishment, That those who please me now may read and see How self-sustained I am, with what content I thrive alike on love or treachery.

God, Thou hast Christ, they say, at Thy right hand; Close by Thy left Michael is straight and leal; Around Thy throne the chanting elders stand, And on the earth Thy feudal millions kneel. Criest Thou never, Lord, above their song: “But Lucifer was tall, his wings were long?”

_Revelation_

Pity me, I said; But you cried, Pity you; And suddenly I saw Higher than my own grief grew. I saw a tree of woe so tall, So deeply boughed with grief, That matched with it my bitter plant Was dwarfed into a leaf.

[Illustration]

_Bright Bindings_

Your love to me was like an unread book, Bright-backed, with smooth white pages yet unslit; Fondly as a lover, foolishly, I took It from its shelf one day and opened it. Here shall I read, I thought, beauty and grace, The soul’s most high and awful poetry:-- Alas for lovers and the faith they place In love, alas for you, alas for me.

I have but read a page or two at most, The most my horror-blinded eyes may read. I find here but a windy tapering ghost Where I sought flesh gifted to ache and bleed. Yet back you go, though counterfeit you be. I love bright books even when they fail me.

_Ghosts_

Breast under breast when you shall lie With him who in my place Bends over you with flashing eye And ever nearing face;

Hand fast in hand when you shall tread With him the springing ways Of love from me inherited After my little phase;

Be not surprised if suddenly The couch or air confound Your ravished ears upbraidingly, And silence turn to sound.

But never let it trouble you, Or cost you one caress; Ghosts are soon sent with a word or two Back to their loneliness.

_Song in Spite of Myself_

Never love with all your heart, It only ends in aching; And bit by bit to the smallest part That organ will be breaking.

Never love with all your mind, It only ends in fretting; In musing on sweet joys behind, Too poignant for forgetting.

Never love with all your soul, For such there is no ending, Though a mind that frets may find control, And a shattered heart find mending.

Give but a grain of the heart’s rich seed, Confine some under cover, And when love goes, bid him God-speed, And find another lover.

_Nothing Endures_

Nothing endures, Not even love, Though the warm heart purrs Of the length thereof.

Though beauty wax, Yet shall it wane; Time lays a tax On the subtlest brain.

Let the blood riot, Give it its will; It shall grow quiet, It shall grow still.

Nirvana gapes For all things given; Nothing escapes, Love not even.

_There Must Be Words_

This wound will be effaced as others have, This scar recede into oblivion, Leaving the skin immaculate and suave, With none to guess the thing they gaze upon. After a decent show of mourning I, As once I ever was, shall be as free To look on love with calm unfaltering eye, And marvel that such fools as lovers be.

These are brave words from one who like a child Cuts dazzling arabesques on summer ice That, kissed by sun, begins to crack and thaw; The old assurance dies, only the wild Desire to live goes on; any device Compels its frantic grasp, even a straw.

_One Day I Told My Love_

One day I told my love my heart, Disclosed it out and in; I let her read the ill-writ chart Small with virtue, big with sin.

I took it from the hidden socket Where it was wont to grieve; “I’ll turn it,” I said, “into a locket, Or a bright band for your sleeve.”

I let her hold the naked thing No one had seen before; And had she willed, her hand might wring It dry and drop it to the floor.

It was a gentle thing she did, The wisest and the best; “The proper place for a heart,” she said, “Is back in the sheltering breast.”

_Lesson_

I lay in silence at her side, My heart’s and spirit’s choice; For we had said harsh things and cried On love in a bitter voice.

We lay and watched two points in space, Pricked in heaven, faint and far. They seemed so near, but who could trace That width between star and star?

We lay and watched, and suddenly There was a streak of light, And where were two, the eye might see But one star in the night.

My hand stole out, her hand crept near, Grief was a splintered spar; Two fused in one there, did you hear Us claiming kinship, star?

[Illustration]

_The Street Called Crooked_

(Le Havre, August 1928)

“_Bon soir, monsieur_,” they called to me; And, “_Venez voir nos femmes._” “_Bon soir, mesdames_,” they got from me, And, “_J’ai une meilleure dame._”

“To meet strange lips and foreign eyes I did not cross the foam, I have a dearer, fairer prize Who waits for me at home.”

“Her eyes are browner, lips more red Than any lady’s light; ’Twould grieve her heart and droop her head If I failed her tonight.”

“_Bon soir, mesdames; que Dieu vous garde_; And catch this coin I throw; The ways of life are bleak and hard, Ladies, I think you know.”

A bright and crooked street it gleamed With light and laughter filled; All night the warm wine frothed and streamed While souls were stripped and killed.

_The Law That Changeth Not_

Stern legislation of a Persian hand Upon my heart, Love, strict Medean writ, Must till the end of time and me command Obeisance from him who fostered it. All other codes may hide their littlest flaw Toward which the hopeful prisoner may kneel; I come of those who once they write a law Do barricade themselves against appeal.

So stand I now condemned by mine own tort; Extenuations? There is none to plead. I am my own most ultimate resort; There is no pardon for the stricken Mede. I turn to go, half valiant, half absurd, To perish on a promise, die on a word.

_Valedictory_

No word upon the boarded page That once in praise I spoke, Would I in bitterness and rage, Had I the power, revoke. Take them and bind them to your heart, With ribbon or with rue. An end arrives to all we start; I write no more of you.

Go then, adhere to the vows you make Out of a haughty heart; No more to tremble for my sake Nor writhe beneath the smart Of hearing on an alien tongue Tolled lightly and in play, The bell by which our lives were rung, The bell we break today.

Love ever was the brightest dream My pen might seize upon; Think not I shall renounce the theme Now that the dream is done. We are put by, but not the Bow, The Arrows, and the Dove. Though you and I go down, still glow The armaments of love.

The essence shines devoid of form, Passion plucked of its sting, The Holy Rose that hides no worm, The Everlasting Thing. Though loud I cry on Venus’ name To heal me and subdue The rising tide, the raging flame, I write no more of you.

Rare was the poem we began (We called it that!) to live, And for a while the measures ran With all the heart could give. But, oh, the golden vein was thin, Early the dark cock crew; The heart cried out (love’s muezzin): I write no more of you.

_Color_

_To Certain Critics_

Then call me traitor if you must, Shout treason and default! Say I betray a sacred trust Aching beyond this vault. I’ll bear your censure as your praise, For never shall the clan Confine my singing to its ways Beyond the ways of man.

No racial option narrows grief, Pain is no patriot, And sorrow plaits her dismal leaf For all as lief as not. With blind sheep groping every hill, Searching an oriflamme, How shall the shepherd heart then thrill To only the darker lamb?

_Black Majesty_

(After reading John W. Vandercook’s chronicle of sable glory)

These men were kings, albeit they were black, Christophe and Dessalines and L’Ouverture; Their majesty has made me turn my back Upon a plaint I once shaped to endure. These men were black, I say, but they were crowned And purple-clad, however brief their time. Stifle your agony; let grief be drowned; We know joy had a day once and a clime.

Dark gutter-snipe, black sprawler-in-the-mud, A thing men did a man may do again. What answer filters through your sluggish blood To these dark ghosts who knew so bright a reign? “Lo, I am dark, but comely,” Sheba sings. “And we were black,” three shades reply, “but kings.”

[Illustration]

_Song of Praise_

Who lies with his milk-white maiden, Bound in the length of her pale gold hair, Cooled by her lips with the cold kiss laden, He lies, but he loves not there.

Who lies with his nut-brown maiden, Bruised to the bone by her sin-black hair, Warmed with the wine that her full lips trade in, He lies, and his love lies there.

[Illustration]

_The Black Christ_

(_Hopefully dedicated to White America_)

_The Black Christ_

1

God’s glory and my country’s shame, And how one man who cursed Christ’s name May never fully expiate That crime till at the Blessed Gate Of Heaven He meet and pardon me Out of His love and charity; How God, who needs no man’s applause, For love of my stark soul, of flaws Composed, seeing it slip, did stoop Down to the mire and pick me up, And in the hollow of His hand Enact again at my command The world’s supremest tragedy, Until I die my burthen be; How Calvary in Palestine, Extending down to me and mine, Was but the first leaf in a line Of trees on which a Man should swing World without end, in suffering For all men’s healing, let me sing.

O world grown indolent and crass, I stand upon your bleak morass Of incredulity and cry Your lack of faith is but a lie. If you but brushed the scales apart That cloud your eyes and clinch your heart There is no telling what grace might Be leveled to your clearer sight; Nor what stupendous choir break Upon your soul till you should ache (If you but let your fingers veer, And raised to heaven a listening ear) In utter pain in every limb To know and sing as they that hymn. If men would set their lips to prayer With that delight with which they swear, Heaven and earth as bow and string, Would meet, would be attuned and sing.

We are diseased, trunk, branch, and shoot; A sickness gathers at the root Of us. We flaunt a gaudy fruit But maggots wrangle at the core. We cry for angels; yet wherefore, Who raise no Jacobs any more?... No men with eyes quick to perceive The Shining Thing, clutch at its sleeve, Against the strength of Heaven try The valiant force of men who die;-- With heaving heart where courage sings Strive with a mist of Light and Wings, And wrestle all night long, though pressed Be rib to rib and back to breast, Till in the end the lofty guest Pant, “Conquering human, be thou blest.”

As once they stood white-plumed and still, All unobserved on Dothan’s hill, Now, too, the angels, stride for stride, Would march with us, but are denied. Did we but let our credence sprout As we do mockery and doubt, Lord Christ Himself would stand revealed In every barren, frosty field That we misname the heart. Belief In something more than pain and grief, In only earth’s most commonplace, Might yet illumine every face Of wretchedness, every blinded eye, If from the hermitage where nigh These thousand years the world of men Has hemmed her in, might come again With gracious eyes and gentle breath The still unconquered Lady, Faith.

_Two brothers have I had on earth, One of spirit, one of sod; My mother suckled one at birth, One was the Son of God._

Since that befell which came to me, Since I was singled out to be, Upon a wheel of mockery, The pattern of a new faith spun; I never doubt that once the sun For respite stopped in Gibeon, Or that a Man I could not know Two thousand ageless years ago, To shape my profit by His loss, Bought my redemption on a cross.

2

“Now spring that heals the wounds of earth Is being born; and in her birth The wounds of men may find a cure. By such a thought I may endure, And of some things be no less sure. This is a cruel land, this South, And bitter words to twist my mouth, Burning my tongue down to its root, Were easily found; but I am mute Before the wonder of this thing: That God should send so pure a spring, Such grass to grow, such birds to sing, And such small trees bravely to sprout With timid leaves first coming out. A land spring yearly levies on Is gifted with God’s benison. The very odor of the loam Fetters me here to this, my home. The whitest lady in the town Yonder trailing a silken gown Is less kin to this dirt than I. Rich mistresses with proud heads high This dirt and I are one to them; They flick us both from the bordered hem Of lovely garments we supply; But I and the dirt see just as high As any lady cantering by. Why should I cut this bond, my son, This tie too taut to be undone? This ground and I are we not one? Has it not birthed and grown and fed me: Yea, if you will, and also bled me? That little patch of wizened corn Aching and straining to be born, May render back at some small rate The blood and bone of me it ate. The weevil there that rends apart My cotton also tears my heart. Here too, your father, lean and black, Paid court to me with all the knack Of any dandy in the town, And here were born, and here have grown, His sons and mine, as lean and black. What ghosts there are in this old shack Of births and deaths, soft times and hard! I count it little being barred From those who undervalue me. I have my own soul’s ecstasy. Men may not bind the summer sea, Nor set a limit to the stars; The sun seeps through all iron bars; The moon is ever manifest. These things my heart always possessed. And more than this (and here’s the crown) No man, my son, can batter down The star-flung ramparts of the mind. So much for flesh; I am resigned, Whom God has made shall He not guide?”

[Illustration]

So spake my mother, and her pride For one small minute in its tide Bore all my bitterness away. I saw the thin bent form, the gray Hair shadowed in the candlelight, The eyes fast parting with their sight, The rough, brown fingers, lean with toil, Marking her kinship to the soil. Year crowding year, after the death Of that one man whose last drawn breath Had been the gasping of her name, She had wrought on, lit with some flame Her children sensed, but could not see, And with a patient wizardry Wheedled her stubborn bit of land To yield beneath her coaxing hand, And sometimes in a lavish hour To blossom even with a flower. Time after time her eyes grew dim Watching a life pay for the whim Some master of the land must feed To keep her people down. The seed They planted in her children’s breasts Of hatred toward these men like beasts She weeded out with legends how Once there had been somewhere as now A people harried, low in the dust; But such had been their utter trust In Heaven and its field of stars That they had broken down their bars, And walked across a parted sea Praising His name who set them free. I think more than the tales she told, The music in her voice, the gold And mellow notes she wrought, Made us forbear to voice the thought Low-buried underneath our love, That we saw things she knew not of. We had no scales upon our eyes; God, if He was, kept to His skies, And left us to our enemies. Often at night fresh from our knees And sorely doubted litanies We grappled for the mysteries: “We never seem to reach nowhere,” Jim with a puzzled, questioning air, Would kick the covers back and stare For me the elder to explain. As like as not, my sole refrain Would be, “A man was lynched last night.” “Why?” Jim would ask, his eyes star-bright. “A white man struck him; he showed fight. Maybe God thinks such things are right.” “Maybe God never thinks at all-- Of us,” and Jim would clench his small, Hard fingers tight into a ball.

“Likely there ain’t no God at all,” Jim was the first to clothe a doubt With words, that long had tried to sprout Against our wills and love of one Whose faith was like a blazing sun Set in a dark, rebellious sky. Now then the roots were fast, and I Must nurture them in her despite. God could not be, if He deemed right, The grief that ever met our sight.

Jim grew; a brooder, silent, sheathed; But pride was in the air he breathed; Inside you knew an Ætna seethed. Often when some new holocaust Had come to undermine and blast The life of some poor wretch we knew, His bones would show like white scars through His fists in anger’s futile way. “I have a fear,” he used to say, “This thing may come to me some day. Some man contemptuous of my race And its lost rights in this hard place, Will strike me down for being black. But when I answer I’ll pay back The late revenge long overdue A thousand of my kind and hue. A thousand black men, long since gone Will guide my hand, stiffen the brawn, And speed one life-divesting blow Into some granite face of snow. And I may swing, but not before I send some pale ambassador Hot footing it to hell to say A proud black man is on his way.”

When such hot venom curled his lips And anger snapped like sudden whips Of lightning in his eyes, her words,-- Slow, gentle as the fall of birds That having strained to win aloft Spread out their wings and slowly waft Regretfully back to the earth,-- Would challenge him to name the worth Contained in any seed of hate. Ever the same soft words would mate Upon her lips: love, trust, and wait. But he, young, quick, and passionate, Could not so readily conceal, Deeper than acid-burns, or steel Inflicted wounds, his vital hurt; So still the bitter phrase would spurt: “The things I’ve seen, the things I see, Show what my neighbor thinks of me. The world is large enough for two Men any time, of any hue. I give pale men a wide berth ever; Best not to meet them, for I never Could bend my spirit, never truckle To them; my blood’s too hot to knuckle.”

And true; the neighbors spoke of him As that proud nigger, handsome Jim. It was a grudging compliment, Half paid in jest, half fair intent, By those whose partial, jaundiced eye Saw each of us as one more fly, Or one more bug the summer brings, All shaped alike; antennæ, wings, And noxious all; if caught, to die. But Jim was not just one more fly, For he was handsome in a way Night is after a long, hot day. If blood flows on from heart to heart, And strong men leave their counterpart In vice and virtue in their seed, Jim’s bearing spoke his imperial breed. I was an offshoot, crude, inclined More to the earth; he was the kind Whose every graceful movement said, As blood must say, by turn of head, By twist of wrist, and glance of eye, “Good blood flows here, and it runs high.” He had an ease of limb, a raw, Clean, hilly stride that women saw With quickened throbbings of the breast. There was a show of wings; the nest Was too confined; Jim needed space To loop and dip and interlace; For he had passed the stripling stage, And stood a man, ripe for the wage A man extorts of life; his gage Was down. The beauty of the year Was on him now, and somewhere near By in the woods, as like as not, His cares were laid away, forgot In hearty wonderment and praise Of one of spring’s all perfect days.

[Illustration]

But in my heart a shadow walked At beauty’s side; a terror stalked For prey this loveliness of time. A curse lay on this land and clime. For all my mother’s love of it, Prosperity could not be writ In any book of destiny For this most red epitome Of man’s consistent cruelty To man. Corruption, blight, and rust Were its reward, and canker must Set in. There were too many ghosts Upon its lanes, too many hosts Of dangling bodies in the wind, Too many voices, choked and thinned, Beseeching mercy on its air. And like the sea set in my ear Ever there surged the steady fear Lest this same end and brutal fate March toward my proud, importunate Young brother. Often he’d say, “’Twere best, I think, we moved away.” But custom and an unseen hand Compelled allegiance to this land In her, and she by staying nailed Us there, by love securely jailed.