Part 3

A city lay in travail, God our Lord, and from her loins sprang twin Murder and Black Hate. Red was the midnight; clang, crack and cry of death and fury filled the air and trembled underneath the stars when church spires pointed silently to Thee. And all this was to sate the greed of greedy men who hide behind the veil of vengeance!

_Bend us Thine ear, O Lord!_

In the pale, still morning we looked upon the deed. We stopped our ears and held our leaping hands, but they--did they not wag their heads and leer and cry with bloody jaws: _Cease from Crime!_ The word was mockery, for thus they train a hundred crimes while we do cure one.

_Turn again our captivity, O Lord!_

Behold this maimed and broken thing; dear God, it was an humble black man who toiled and sweat to save a bit from the pittance paid him. They told him: _Work and Rise_. He worked. Did this man sin? Nay, but some one told how some one said another did--one whom he had never seen nor known. Yet for that man’s crime this man lieth maimed and murdered, his wife naked to shame, his children, to poverty and evil.

_Hear us, O Heavenly Father!_

Doth not this justice of hell stink in Thy nostrils, O God? How long shall the mounting flood of innocent blood roar in Thine ears and pound in our hearts for vengeance? Pile the pale frenzy of blood-crazed brutes who do such deeds high on Thine altar, Jehovah Jireh, and burn it in hell forever and forever!

_Forgive us, good Lord; we know not what we say!_

Bewildered we are, and passion-tost, mad with the madness of a mobbed and mocked and murdered people; straining at the armposts of Thy Throne, we raise our shackled hands and charge Thee, God, by the bones of our stolen fathers, by the tears of our dead mothers, by the very blood of Thy crucified Christ: _What meaneth this?_ Tell us the Plan; give us the Sign!

_Keep not Thou silence, O God!_

Sit no longer blind, Lord God, deaf to our prayer and dumb to our dumb suffering. Surely, Thou too art not white, O Lord, a pale, bloodless, heartless thing?

_Ah! Christ of all the Pities!_

Forgive the thought! Forgive these wild, blasphemous words. Thou art still the God of our black fathers, and in Thy soul’s soul sit some soft darkenings of the evening, some shadowings of the velvet night.

But whisper--speak--call, great God, for Thy silence is white terror to our hearts! The way, O God, show us the way and point us the path.

Whither? North is greed and South is blood; within, the coward, and without the liar. Whither? To death?

_Amen! Welcome dark sleep!_

Whither? To life? But not this life, dear God, not this. Let the cup pass from us, tempt us not beyond our strength, for there is that clamoring and clawing within, to whose voice we would not listen, yet shudder lest we must, and it is red, Ah! God! It is a red and awful shape.

_Selah!_

In yonder East trembles a star. _Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord!_

Thy will, O Lord, be done! _Kyrie Eleison!_

Lord, we have done these pleading, wavering words. _We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!_

We bow our heads and hearken soft to the sobbing of women and little children. _We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!_

Our voices sink in silence and in night. _Hear us, good Lord!_

In night, O God of a godless land! _Amen!_

In silence, O Silent God. _Selah!_

FOOTNOTES:

[9] From “Dark Water” by W. E. B. Du Bois, Copyright 1920 by Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc.

WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

William Stanley Braithwaite was born in Boston Dec. 6, 1878. He inherited the incentives and ideals of the intellect from an ancestry of British gentlemen. He has written verse and prose and was for many years leading reviewer of books in the _Boston Transcript_. He has published twenty volumes, and his yearly anthology of verse establishes for each year the best poetry printed in the magazines.

SCINTILLA

I kissed a kiss in youth Upon a dead man’s brow; And that was long ago,-- And I’m a grown man now.

It’s lain there in the dust, Thirty years and more;-- My lips that set a light At a dead man’s door.

RYE BREAD

Father John’s bread was made of rye, Felicite’s bread was white; Father John loved the sun noon-high, Felicite, the moon at night.

Father John drank wine with his bread; Felicite drank sweet milk; Father John loved flowers, pungent and red; Felicite, lilies soft as silk.

Father John’s soul was made of bronze, That God’s salt was corroding; Felicite’s soul was a wind that runs With a blue flame of foreboding.

Between these two was the shadow of a dome That cut their lives in twain; But Dionysus led them home In a chariot of pain.

OCTOBER XXIX, 1795

(Keats’ Birthday)

Time sitting on the throne of Memory Bade all her subject Days the past had known Arise and say what thing gave them renown Unforgetable, ‘Rising from the sea, I gave the Genoese his dreams to be;’ ‘I saw the Corsican’s Guards swept down;’ ‘Colonies I made free from a tyrant’s crown;’-- So each Day told its immortality.

And with these blazing triumphs spoke one voice Whose wistful speech no vaunting did employ: ‘I know not if ’twere by Fate’s chance or choice I hold the lowly birth of an English boy; I only know he made man’s heart rejoice Because he played with Beauty for a toy!’

DEL CASCAR

Del Cascar, Del Cascar Stood upon a flaming star, Stood and let his feet hang down Till in China the toes turned brown.

And he reached his fingers over The rim of the sea, like sails from Dover, And caught a Mandarin at prayer, And tickled his nose in Orion’s hair.

The sun went down through crimson bars, And left his blind face battered with stars-- But the brown toes in China kept Hot the tears Del Cascar wept.

JAMES EDWARD McCALL

James Edward McCall was born September 2, 1880 at Montgomery, Ala., and received his early education in the public schools of that city. Graduating from the Alabama State Normal in 1900 he entered Howard University as a medical student the same year, but some months later was forced to abandon his medical career, following an attack of typhoid fever leading to total blindness. Undaunted by this misfortune, he at once set out to develop his literary talent. During this period he read and studied much through the eyes of others, also writing many poems, a number of which were published in Southern dailies, the _New York World_ and other periodicals. _The Montgomery_ (Alabama) _Advertiser_ styled him “The Blind Tom of Literature.” One of his poems, “_Meditation_,” has been compared to Bryant’s “Thanatopsis.”

Despite his handicap, McCall determined to acquire a college education. Accompanied by his sister, he entered Albion College (Michigan) in 1905, where he was graduated two years later, being the only sightless student in the college. Returning to his natal city, he took up journalistic work, for some years being employed as a special writer for one of the local white dailies, also contributing to other periodicals, and ultimately publishing at Montgomery a successful race weekly--_The Emancipator_.

This blind writer is ably assisted in his journalistic work by his wife, to whom he was married in 1914. He and his family moved to Detroit in 1920. He is city editor and editorial writer for the _Detroit Independent_, his editorials in this publication having been widely read and re-published throughout the country during the past two years.

THE NEW NEGRO

He scans the world with calm and fearless eyes, Conscious within of powers long since forgot; At every step, new man-made barriers rise To bar his progress--but he heeds them not. He stands erect, though tempests round him crash, Though thunder bursts and billows surge and roll; He laughs and forges on, while lightnings flash Along the rocky pathway to his goal. Impassive as a Sphinx, he stares ahead-- Foresees new empires rise and old ones fall; While caste-mad nations lust for blood to shed, He sees God’s finger writing on the wall. With soul awakened, wise and strong he stands, Holding his destiny within his hands.

ANGELINA WELD GRIMKÉ

Angelina Weld Grimké was born in Boston, Mass., February 27, 1880. She was a student at Carleton Academy, Northfield, Minn., Cushing Academy, Ashburnham, Mass., and Girls’ Latin School, Boston. In 1902 she was graduated from the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics. In 1902 she began her career as a teacher in the Armstrong Manual Training School in Washington, D. C.; since 1916 she has taught in the Dunbar High School in the same city. She is the author of a three act play _Rachel_ published in 1920, short stories, and numerous poems.

HUSHED BY THE HANDS OF SLEEP

(To Dr. George F. Grant)

_I_

Hushed by the hands of Sleep, By the beautiful hands of Sleep. Very gentle and quiet he lies, With a little smile of sweet surprise, Just softly hushed at lips and eyes, Hushed by the hands of Sleep, By the beautiful hands of Sleep.

_II_

Hushed by the hands of Sleep, By the beautiful hands of Sleep. Death leaned down as his eyes grew dim, And his face, I know, was not strange, not grim, But oh! it was beautiful to him, Hushed by the hands of Sleep, By the beautiful hands of Sleep.

GREENNESS

Tell me is there anything lovelier, Anything more quieting Than the green of little blades of grass And the green of little leaves?

Is not each leaf a cool green hand, Is not each blade of grass a mothering green finger, Hushing the heart that beats and beats and beats?

THE EYES OF MY REGRET

Always at dusk, the same tearless experience, The same dragging of feet up the same well-worn path To the same well-worn rock; The same crimson or gold dropping away of the sun, The same tints--rose, saffron, violet, lavender, grey, Meeting, mingling, mixing mistily; Before me the same blue black cedar rising jaggedly to a point; Over it, the same slow unlidding of twin stars, Two eyes unfathomable, soul-searing, Watching, watching--watching me; The same two eyes that draw me forth, against my will dusk after dusk; The same two eyes that keep me sitting late into the night, chin on knees, Keep me there lonely, rigid, tearless, numbly miserable,--The eyes of my Regret.

GRASS FINGERS

Touch me, touch me, Little cool grass fingers, Elusive, delicate grass fingers. With your shy brushings, Touch my face-- My naked arms-- My thighs-- My feet. Is there nothing that is kind? You need not fear me. Soon I shall be too far beneath you, For you to reach me, even, With your tiny, timorous toes.

SURRENDER

We ask for peace. We, at the bound O life, are weary of the round In search of Truth. We know the quest Is not for us, the vision blest Is meant for other eyes. Uncrowned, We go, with heads bowed to the ground, And old hands, gnarled and hard and browned. Let us forget the past unrest,-- We ask for peace.

Our strainéd ears are deaf,--no sound May reach them more; no sight may wound Our worn-out eyes. We gave our best, And, while we totter down the West, Unto that last, that open mound,-- We ask for peace.

THE WAYS O’ MEN

’Tis queer, it is, the ways o’ men, Their comin’s and their goin’s; For there’s the grey road, The straight road With the grey dust liftin’ With ev’ry step And the little roads off-flingin’.

Maybe it’s a bit of a sly field That crooks a finger to them And sends them to the turnin’; Or the round firm bosom Of a little hill Acallin’ to them, them with their heads That heavy; Or maybe it’s the black look Given out of the tail of the eye; Or a white word, wingin’; Maybe it’s only the back of a little tot’s neck In the sunlight; Or the red lips of a woman Parting slow.... Sure there’s no tellin’.

One I saw goin’ towards a white star At the edge of a daffydill sky, Its lights kissin’ straight into his eyes. Maybe it’s a gold piece To be taken from another In the dark; Or the neat place between the ribs Waitin’ for the knife That one comes after carryin’ for it. ’Tis few, it is, that goes with the grey road The straight road All the way, With the grey dust liftin’ at ev’ry step.

’Tis queer, it is, the ways o’ men, With a level look at you, or a crooked As they be passin’. Pouf! Sure, ’tis so fast they’re goin’, Does it matter about the turnin’s?

TENEBRIS

There is a tree, by day, That, at night, Has a shadow, A hand huge and black, With fingers long and black. All through the dark, Against the white man’s house, In the little wind, The black hand plucks and plucks At the bricks. The bricks are the color of blood and very small. Is it a black hand, Or is it a shadow?

WHEN THE GREEN LIES OVER THE EARTH

When the green lies over the earth, my dear, A mantle of witching grace, When the smile and the tear of the young child year Dimple across its face, And then flee, when the wind all day is sweet With the breath of growing things, When the wooing bird lights on restless feet And chirrups and trills and sings To his lady-love In the green above, Then oh! my dear, when the youth’s in the year, Yours is the face that I long to have near, Yours is the face, my dear.

But the green is hiding your curls, my dear, Your curls so shining and sweet; And the gold-hearted daisies this many a year Have bloomed and bloomed at your feet, And the little birds just above your head With their voices hushed, my dear, For you have sung and have prayed and have pled This many, many a year.

And the blossoms fall, On the garden wall, And drift like snow on the green below. But the sharp thorn grows On the budding rose, And my heart no more leaps at the sunset glow. For oh! my dear, when the youth’s in the year, Yours is the face that I long to have near, Yours is the face, my dear.

A MONA LISA

1.

I should like to creep Through the long brown grasses That are your lashes; I should like to poise On the very brink Of the leaf-brown pools That are your shadowed eyes; I should like to cleave Without sound, Their glimmering waters, Their unrippled waters, I should like to sink down And down And down ... And deeply drown.

2.

Would I be more than a bubble breaking? Or an ever-widening circle Ceasing at the marge? Would my white bones Be the only white bones Wavering back and forth, back and forth In their depths?

PARADOX

When face to face we stand And eye to eye, How far apart we are----As far, they say, as God can ever be From what, they say, is Hell.

* * * * *

But, when we stand Fronting the other, Mile after mile slipping in between, O, close we are, As close as is the shadow to the body, As breath, to life, ............ As kisses are to love.

* * * * *

YOUR HANDS

I love your hands: They are big hands, firm hands, gentle hands; Hair grows on the back near the wrist ... I have seen the nails broken and stained From hard work. And yet, when you touch me, I grow small ....... and quiet ........ ....... And happy .......... If I might only grow small enough To curl up into the hollow of your palm, Your left palm, Curl up, lie close and cling, So that I might know myself always there, ....... Even if you forgot.

I WEEP

--I weep-- Not as the young do noisily, Not as the aged rustily, But quietly. Drop by drop the great tears Splash upon my hands, And save you saw them shine, You would not know I wept.

FOR THE CANDLE LIGHT

The sky was blue, so blue that day And each daisy white, so white, O, I knew that no more could rains fall grey And night again be night.

* * * * *

I _knew_, I _knew_. Well, if night is night, And the grey skies greyly cry, I have in a book for the candle light, A daisy dead and dry.

DUSK

Twin stars through my purpling pane, The shriveling husk Of a yellowing moon on the wane-- And the dusk.

THE PUPPET PLAYER

Sometimes it seems as though some puppet player A clenched claw cupping a craggy chin, Sits just beyond the border of our seeing, Twitching the strings with slow sardonic grin.

A WINTER TWILIGHT

A silence slipping around like death, Yet chased by a whisper, a sigh, a breath; One group of trees, lean, naked and cold, Inking their crests ’gainst a sky green-gold; One path that knows where the corn flowers were; Lonely, apart, unyielding, one fir; And over it softly leaning down, One star that I loved ere the fields went brown.

ANNE SPENCER

From Lynchburg, Va., where she lives, Anne Spencer writes, “Mother Nature, February, forty-five years ago forced me on the stage that I, in turn, might assume the rôle of lonely child, happy wife, perplexed mother--and, so far, a twice resentful grandmother. I have no academic honors, nor lodge regalia. I am a Christian by intention, a Methodist by inheritance, and a Baptist by marriage. I write about some of the things I love. But have no civilized articulation for the things I hate. I proudly love being a Negro woman--it’s so involved and interesting. _We_ are the PROBLEM--the great national game of TABOO.”

NEIGHBORS

Ah, you are cruel; You ask too much; Offered a hand, a finger-tip, You must have a soul to clutch.

I HAVE A FRIEND

I have a friend And my heart from hence Is closed to friendship, Nor the gods’ knees hold but one; He watches with me thru the long night, And when I call he comes, Or when he calls I am there; He does not ask me how beloved Are my husband and children, Nor ever do I require Details of life and love In the grave--his home,-- We are such friends.

SUBSTITUTION

Is Life itself but many ways of thought, Does _thinking_ furl the poets’ pleiades, Is in His slightest convolution wrought These mantled worlds and their men-freighted seas? He thinks--and being comes to ardent things: The splendor of the day-spent sun, love’s birth,-- Or dreams a little, while creation swings The circle of His mind and Time’s full girth ... As here within this noisy peopled room My thought leans forward ... quick! you’re lifted clear Of brick and frame to moonlit garden bloom,-- Absurdly easy, now, our walking, dear, Talking, my leaning close to touch your face ... His All-Mind bids us keep this sacred place!

QUESTING

Let me learn now where Beauty is; My day is spent too far toward night To wander aimlessly and miss her place; To grope, eyes shut, and fingers touching space.

Her maidens I have known, seen durance beside, Handmaidens to the Queen, whose duty bids Them lie and lure afield their Vestal’s acolyte, Lest a human shake the throne, lest a god should know his might: Nereid, daughter of the Trident, steering in her shell, Paused in voyage, smile beguiling, tempted and I fell; Spiteful dryads, sport forsaking, tossing birchen wreathes, Left the Druidic priests they teased so In the oaken trees, crying, “Ho a mortal! here a believer!” Bound me, she who held the sceptre, stricken by her, ah, deceiver ... But let me learn now where Beauty is; I was born to know her mysteries, And needing wisdom I must go in vain: Being sworn bring to some hither land, Leaf from her brow, light from her torchéd hand.

LIFE-LONG, POOR BROWNING ...

Life-long, poor Browning never knew Virginia, Or he’d not grieved in Florence for April sallies Back to English gardens after Euclid’s linear: Clipt yews, Pomander Walks, and pleachéd alleys;

Primroses, prim indeed, in quite ordered hedges, Waterways, soberly, sedately enchanneled, No thin riotous blade even among the sedges, All the wild country-side tamely impaneled ...

Dead, now, dear Browning, lives on in heaven,-- (Heaven’s Virginia when the year’s at its Spring) He’s haunting the byways of wine-aired leaven And throating the notes of the wildings on wing;

Here canopied reaches of dogwood and hazel, Beech tree and redbud fine-laced in vines, Fleet clapping rills by lush fern and basil, Drain blue hills to lowlands scented with pines ...

Think you he meets in this tender green sweetness Shade that was Elizabeth ... immortal completeness!

DUNBAR

Ah, how poets sing and die! Make one song and Heaven takes it; Have one heart and Beauty breaks it; Chatterton, Shelley, Keats and I-- Ah, how poets sing and die!

INNOCENCE

She tripped and fell against a star, A lady we all have known; Just what the villagers lusted for To claim her one of their own; Fallen but once the lower felt she, So turned her face and died,-- With never a hounding fool to see ’Twas a star-lance in her side!

CREED

If my garden oak spares one bare ledge For a boughed mistletoe to grow and wedge; And all the wild birds this year should know I cherish their freedom to come and go; If a battered worthless dog, masterless, alone, Slinks to my heels, sure of bed and bone; And the boy just moved in, deigns a glance-assay, Turns his pockets inside out, calls, “Come and play!” If I should surprise in the eyes of my friend That the deed was _my_ favor he’d let me lend; Or hear it repeated from a foe I despise, That I whom he hated was chary of lies; If a pilgrim stranger, fainting and poor, Followed an urge and rapped at my door, And my husband loves me till death puts apart, Less as flesh unto flesh, more as heart unto heart: I may challenge God when we meet That Day, And He dare not be silent or send me away.

LINES TO A NASTURTIUM

(A lover muses)

Flame-flower, Day-torch, Mauna Loa, I saw a daring bee, today, pause, and soar, Into your flaming heart; Then did I hear crisp, crinkled laughter As the furies after tore him apart? A bird, next, small and humming, Looked into your startled depths and fled.... Surely, some dread sight, and dafter Than human eyes as mine can see, Set the stricken air waves drumming In his flight.

Day-torch, Flame-flower, cool-hot Beauty, I cannot see, I cannot hear your flutey Voice lure your loving swain, But I know one other to whom you are in beauty Born in vain: Hair like the setting sun, Her eyes a rising star, Motions gracious as reeds by Babylon, bar All your competing; Hands like, how like, brown lilies sweet, Cloth of gold were fair enough to touch her feet ... Ah, how the sense floods at my repeating, _As once in her fire-lit heart I felt the furies_ Beating, beating.

AT THE CARNIVAL