Chapter 5 of 11 · 3998 words · ~20 min read

Part 5

Long have I beat with timid hands upon life’s leaden door, Praying the patient, futile prayer my fathers prayed before, Yet I remain without the close, unheeded and unheard, And never to my listening ear is borne the waited word.

Soft o’er the threshold of the years there comes this counsel cool: The strong demand, contend, prevail; the beggar is a fool!

LITTLE SON

The very acme of my woe, The pivot of my pride, My consolation, and my hope Deferred, but not denied. The substance of my every dream, The riddle of my plight, The very world epitomized In turmoil and delight.

OLD BLACK MEN

They have dreamed as young men dream Of glory, love and power; They have hoped as youth will hope Of life’s sun-minted hour.

They have seen as others saw Their bubbles burst in air, And they have learned to live it down As though they did not care.

LETHE

I do not ask for love, ah! no, Nor friendship’s happiness, These were relinquished long ago; I search for something less.

I seek a little tranquil bark In which to drift at ease Awhile, and then quite silently To sink in quiet seas.

PROVING

Were you a leper bathed in wounds And by the world denied; I’d share your fatal exile As a privilege and pride. You are to me the sun, the moon, The starlight of my soul, The sounding motif of my heart, The impetus and goal!

I WANT TO DIE WHILE YOU LOVE ME

I want to die while you love me, While yet you hold me fair, While laughter lies upon my lips And lights are in my hair.

I want to die while you love me And bear to that still bed Your kisses turbulent, unspent To warm me when I’m dead.

I want to die while you love me; Oh, who would care to live Till love has nothing more to ask And nothing more to give?

I want to die while you love me, And never, never see The glory of this perfect day Grow dim, or cease to be!

RECESSIONAL

Consider me a memory, a dream that passed away; Or yet a flower that has blown and shattered in a day; For passion sleeps alas and keeps no vigil with the years And wakens to no conjuring of orisons or tears.

Consider me a melody that served its simple turn, Or but the residue of fire that settles in the urn, For love defies pure reasoning and undeterred flows Within, without, the vassal heart--its reasoning who knows?

MY LITTLE DREAMS

I’m folding up my little dreams Within my heart tonight, And praying I may soon forget The torture of their sight.

For time’s deft fingers scroll my brow With fell relentless art-- I’m folding up my little dreams Tonight, within my heart.

WHAT NEED HAVE I FOR MEMORY?

What need have I for memory, When not a single flower Has bloomed within life’s desert For me, one little hour?

What need have I for memory Whose burning eyes have met The corse of unborn happiness Winding the trail regret?

WHEN I AM DEAD

When I am dead, withhold, I pray, your blooming legacy; Beneath the willows did I bide, and they should cover me; I longed for light and fragrance, and I sought them far and near, O, it would grieve me utterly, to find them on my bier!

THE DREAMS OF THE DREAMER

The dreams of the dreamer Are life-drops that pass The break in the heart To the soul’s hour-glass.

The songs of the singer Are tones that repeat The cry of the heart Till it ceases to beat.

THE HEART OF A WOMAN

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn, As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on, Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.

The heart of a woman falls back with the night, And enters some alien cage in its plight, And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.

CLAUDE McKAY

“I was born in a very little village high up in the hills of the parish of Clarendon in the island of Jamaica. The village was so small it hadn’t a name like the larger surrounding villages. But our place was called Sunny Ville. I was the youngest of eleven.

My father was a peasant proprietor who owned his land and cultivated large tracts of coffee, cocoa, bananas and sugar-cane. When I was of school age I was sent to my brother who was a schoolmaster in a small town in the North-Western part of the island. He educated me. He was a free-thinker and I became one, too, so soon as I could think about life and religion. I was never a child of any church. My brother had a nice library with books of all sorts and I read such free-thought writers as Haeckel, Huxley, Matthew Arnold, side by side with Shakespeare and the great English novelists and poets (excepting Browning) before I was fourteen. At that time Shakespeare to me was only a wonderful story-teller. When I was seventeen I won a Jamaica Government Trade Scholarship and was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker and wheelwright. I hated trade and quit. When I was nineteen I joined the Jamaica Constabulary and left it after ten months. An English gentleman who was collecting Jamaica folklore became interested in my dialect verses and helped me to publish my first book: _Songs of Jamaica_, in 1911. I was twenty years old then. The next year I went to the United States. First to an educational institution for Negroes in the South. I did not like it, and left there after three months for a college in a Western state. There I stayed two years. Came to New York. Abandoned all thought of returning to the West Indies. Lost a few thousand dollars (a legacy) in high living and bad business. Went to work at various jobs, porter, houseman, longshoreman, bar-man, railroad club and hotel waiter. Kept on writing. The _Seven Arts Magazine_ took two of my poems in 1917. In 1918 Frank Harris published some poems in _Pearson’s_. In 1919 _The Liberator_ published some things. The same year I went to Holland, Belgium and England. Lived in London over a year. Published _Spring in New Hampshire_. Returned to America in 1921. Got a job with Max Eastman on the _Liberator_. Kept it till Max Eastman left for Europe. Went to Russia in 1922. _Harlem Shadows_ published 1922 by Harcourt, Brace & Co. Stayed six months in Moscow and Petrograd. Berlin in 1923. Paris at the end of 1923, where I was very ill for months. Been in France ever since trying to exist and write.”

AMERICA[11]

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth! Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, Giving me strength erect against her hate. Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state, I stand within her walls with not a shred Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, And see her might and granite wonders there, Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

_Claude McKay_

EXHORTATION: SUMMER, 1919[12]

Through the pregnant universe rumbles life’s terrific thunder, And Earth’s bowels quake with terror; strange and terrible storms break, Lightning-torches flame the heavens, kindling souls of men, thereunder: Africa! long ages sleeping, O my motherland, awake!

In the East the clouds glow crimson with the new dawn that is breaking, And its golden glory fills the western skies. O my brothers and my sisters, wake! arise! For the new birth rends the old earth and the very dead are waking, Ghosts are turned flesh, throwing off the grave’s disguise, And the foolish, even children, are made wise; For the big earth groans in travail for the strong, new world in making-- O my brothers, dreaming for dim centuries, Wake from sleeping; to the East turn, turn your eyes!

Oh the night is sweet for sleeping, but the shining day’s for working; Sons of the seductive night, for your children’s children’s sake, From the deep primeval forests where the crouching leopard’s lurking, Lift your heavy-lidded eyes, Ethiopia! awake!

In the East the clouds glow crimson with the new dawn that is breaking, And its golden glory fills the western skies. O my brothers and my sisters, wake! arise! For the new birth rends the old earth and the very dead are waking, Ghosts are turned flesh, throwing off the grave’s disguise, And the foolish, even children, are made wise; For the big earth groans in travail for the strong, new world in making-- O my brothers, dreaming for long centuries, Wake from sleeping; to the East turn, turn your eyes!

FLAME-HEART[13]

So much have I forgotten in ten years, So much in ten brief years! I have forgot What time the purple apples come to juice, And what month brings the shy forget-me-not. I have forgot the special, startling season Of the pimento’s flowering and fruiting; What time of year the ground doves brown the fields And fill the noonday with their curious fluting. I have forgotten much, but still remember The poinsettia’s red, blood-red in warm December.

I still recall the honey-fever grass, But cannot recollect the high days when We rooted them out of the ping-wing path To stop the mad bees in the rabbit pen. I often try to think in what sweet month The languid painted ladies used to dapple The yellow by-road mazing from the main, Sweet with the golden threads of the rose-apple. I have forgotten--strange--but quite remember The poinsettia’s red, blood-red in warm December.

What weeks, what months, what time of the mild year We cheated school to have our fling at tops? What days our wine-thrilled bodies pulsed with joy Feasting upon blackberries in the copse? Oh, some I know! I have embalmed the days, Even the sacred moments when we played, All innocent of passion, uncorrupt, At noon and evening in the flame-heart’s shade. We were so happy, happy, I remember, Beneath the poinsettia’s red in warm December.

THE WILD GOAT[14]

O you would clothe me in silken frocks And house me from the cold, And bind with bright bands my glossy locks, And buy me chains of gold.

And give me--meekly to do my will-- The hapless sons of men:-- But the wild goat bounding on the barren hill Droops in the grassy pen.

RUSSIAN CATHEDRAL

Bow down my soul in worship very low And in the holy silences be lost. Bow down before the marble man of woe, Bow down before the singing angel host. What jewelled glory fills my spirit’s eye! What golden grandeur moves the depths of me! The soaring arches lift me up on high Taking my breath with their rare symmetry.

Bow down my soul and let the wondrous light Of beauty bathe thee from her lofty throne, Bow down before the wonder of man’s might. Bow down in worship, humble and alone; Bow lowly down before the sacred sight Of man’s divinity alive in stone.

DESOLATE

My spirit is a pestilential city, With misery triumphant everywhere, Glutted with baffled hopes and lost to pity; Strange agonies make quiet lodgment there. Its bursting sewers ooze up from below, And spread their loathsome substance through its lanes, Flooding all areas with their evil flow, And blocking all the motion of its veins. Its life is sealed to love or hope or pity; My spirit is a pestilential city.

Above its walls the air is heavy-wet, Brooding in fever mood and hanging thick Round empty tower and broken minaret, Settling upon the tree-tops stricken sick And withered in its dank contagious breath; Their leaves are shrivelled silver, parched decay, Like wilting creepers trailing underneath The chalky yellow of a tropic way. Round crumbling tower and leaning minaret, The air hangs fever-filled and heavy-wet.

And all its many fountains no more spurt; Within the dammed-up tubes they tide and foam Around the drifting sludge and silted dirt, And weep against the soft and liquid loam, And so the city’s ways are washed no more; All is neglected and decayed within. Clean waters beat against its high-walled shore In furious force, but cannot enter in. The suffocated fountains cannot spurt; They foam and weep against the silted dirt.

Beneath the ebon gloom of mounting rocks The little pools lie poisonously still. And birds come to the edge in forlorn flocks, And utter sudden plaintive notes and shrill, Pecking at fatty grey-green substances; But never do they dip their bills and drink. They twitter sad, beneath the mournful trees, And fretfully flit to and from the brink, In little dull brown, green-and-purple flocks, Beneath the jet-gloom of the mounting rocks.

And green-eyed moths of curious design, With gold-black wings and brightly silver-dotted, On nests of flowers among those rocks recline-- Bold, burning blossoms, strangely leopard-spotted, But breathing deadly poison at the lips. Oh, every lovely moth that wanders by, And on the blossoms fatal nectar sips, Is doomed in drooping stupor there to die--All green-eyed moths of curious design That on the fiercely-burning rocks recline.

Oh cold as death is all the loveliness That breathes out of the strangeness of the scene, And sickening like a skeleton’s caress, With clammy clinging fingers, long and lean. Above it float a host of yellow flies, Circling in changeless motion in their place, Snow-thick and mucid in the drooping skies, Swarming across the glassy floor of space. Oh cold as death is all the loveliness And sickening like a skeleton’s caress.

There was a time when, happy with the birds, The little children clapped their hands and laughed; And midst the clouds the glad winds heard their words, And blew down all the merry ways to waft Their music to the scented fields of flowers. Oh sweet were children’s voices in those days, Before the fall of pestilential showers, That drove them forth from all the city’s ways. Now never, never more their silver words Will mingle with the golden of the birds.

Gone, gone forever the familiar forms To which my spirit once so dearly clung, Blown worlds beyond by the destroying storms, And lost away like lovely songs unsung. Yet life still lingers, questioningly strange, Timid and quivering, naked and alone, Biding the cycle of disruptive change, Though all the fond familiar forms are gone Forever gone, the fond familiar forms, Blown worlds beyond by the destroying storms.

ABSENCE[15]

Your words dropped into my heart like pebbles into a pool, Rippling around my breast and leaving it melting cool.

Your kisses fell sharp on my flesh like dawn-dews from the limb Of a fruit-filled lemon tree when the day is young and dim.

Like soft rain-christened sunshine, as fragile as rare gold lace, Your breath, sweet-scented and warm, has kindled my tranquil face.

But a silence vasty-deep, oh deeper than all these ties Now, through the menacing miles, brooding between us lies.

And more than the songs I sing, I await your written word, To stir my fluent blood as never your presence stirred.

MY HOUSE

For this peculiar tint that paints my house Peculiar in an alien atmosphere Where other houses wear a kindred hue, I have a stirring always very rare And romance-making in my ardent blood, That channels through my body like a flood.

I know the dark delight of being strange, The penalty of difference in the crowd, The loneliness of wisdom among fools, Yet never have I felt but very proud, Though I have suffered agonies of hell, Of living in my own peculiar cell.

There is an exaltation of man’s life, His hidden life, that he alone can feel. The blended fires that heat his veins within, Shaping his metals into finest steel, Are elements from his own native earth, That the wise gods bestowed on him at birth.

Oh each man’s mind contains an unknown realm Walled in from other men however near, And unimagined in their highest flights Of comprehension or of vision clear; A realm where he withdraws to contemplate Infinity and his own finite state.

Thence he may sometimes catch a god-like glimpse Of mysteries that seem beyond life’s bar; Thence he may hurl his little shaft at heaven And bring down accidentally a star, And drink its foamy dust like sparkling wine And echo accents of the laugh divine.

Then he may fall into a drunken sleep And wake up in his same house painted blue Or white or green or red or brown or black-- His house, his own, whatever be the hue. But things for him will not be what they seem To average men since he has dreamt his dream!

FOOTNOTES:

JEAN TOOMER

Jean Toomer was born in Washington, D. C., in 1894. He has since lived there and in New York, receiving his education mainly in these cities. Having traveled over a good part of America, experiencing varied aspects of its life and studying the elements of contemporary problems, in 1918 in the midst of a general interest in art, he gradually centered on that of literature. There followed a four year period devoted entirely to writing, the results of which were first given printed form by _The Double Dealer_ of New Orleans. And soon thereafter, sketches, poems, short stories, and critical reviews began appearing in _Broom_, _The Crisis_, _The Dial_, _The Liberator_, _The Little Review_, _Opportunity_, etc. These brought him in contact with a literary and artistic group in New York composed of such men as Waldo Frank, Alfred Steiglitz, Paul Rosenfeld, Gorham B. Munson, and others. With these he has been associated in the effort to articulate the diverse significances of America. In 1923 his first book, _Cane_, was published by Boni and Liveright, New York.

REAPERS

Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones In their hip-pockets as a thing that’s done, And start their silent swinging, one by one. Black horses drive a mower through the weeds, And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds, His belly close to ground. I see the blade, Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade.

EVENING SONG

Full moon rising on the waters of my heart, Lakes and moon and fires, Cloine tires, Holding her lips apart.

Promises of slumber leaving shore to charm the moon, Miracle made vesper-keeps, Cloine sleeps, And I’ll be sleeping soon.

Cloine, curled like the sleepy waters where the moon-waves start, Radiant, resplendently she gleams, Cloine dreams, Lips pressed against my heart.

GEORGIA DUSK

The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue The setting sun, too indolent to hold A lengthened tournament for flashing gold, Passively darkens for night’s barbecue,

A feast of moon and men and barking hounds, An orgy for some genius of the South With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth, Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.

The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop, And silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill, Soft settling pollen where plowed lands fulfill Their early promise of bumper crop.

Smoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile Curls up, blue ghosts of trees, tarrying low Where only chips and stumps are left to show The solid proof of former domicile.

Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp, Race memories of king and caravan, High-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man, Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp.

Their voices rise ... the pine trees are guitars, Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain ... Their voices rise ... the chorus of the cane Is caroling a vesper to the stars ...

O singers, resinous and soft your songs Above the sacred whisper of the pines, Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines, Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.

SONG OF THE SON

Pour O pour that parting soul in song, O pour it in the sawdust glow of night, Into the velvet pine-smoke air to-night, And let the valley carry it along. And let the valley carry it along.

O land and soil, red soil and sweet-gum tree, So scant of grass, so profligate of pines, Now just before an epoch’s sun declines, Thy son, in time, I have returned to thee, Thy son, I have in time returned to thee.

In time, for though the sun is setting on A song-lit race of slaves, it has not set; Though late, O soil, it is not too late yet To catch thy plaintive soul, leaving, soon gone, Leaving, to catch thy plaintive soul soon gone.

O Negro slaves, dark purple ripened plums, Squeezed, and bursting in the pine-wood air, Passing, before they stripped the old tree bare One plum was saved for me, one seed becomes

An everlasting song, a singing tree, Caroling softly souls of slavery, What they were, and what they are to me, Caroling softly souls of slavery.

COTTON SONG

Come, brother, come. Let’s lift it; Come now, hewit! roll away! Shackles fall upon the Judgment Day But let’s not wait for it.

God’s body’s got a soul, Bodies like to roll the soul, Can’t blame God if we don’t roll, Come, brother, roll, roll!

Cotton bales are the fleecy way Weary sinner’s bare feet trod, Softly, softly to the throne of God, “We ain’t agwine t’ wait until th’ Judgment Day!

Nassur; nassur, Hump. Eoho, eoho, roll away! We ain’t agwine t’ wait until th’ Judgment Day!”

God’s body’s got a soul, Bodies like to roll the soul, Can’t blame God if we don’t roll, Come, brother, roll, roll!

FACE

Hair-- silver-gray, like streams of stars, Brows-- recurved canoes quivered by the ripples blown by pain, Her eyes--mist of tears condensing on the flesh below And her channeled muscles are cluster grapes of sorrow purple in the evening sun nearly ripe for worms.

NOVEMBER COTTON FLOWER

Boll-weevil’s coming, and the winter’s cold, Made cotton-stalks look rusty, seasons old, And cotton, scarce as any southern snow, Was vanishing; the branch, so pinched and slow, Failed in its function as the autumn rake; Drouth fighting soil had caused the soil to take All water from the streams; dead birds were found In wells a hundred feet below the ground-- Such was the season when the flower bloomed. Old folks were startled, and it soon assumed Significance. Superstition saw Something it had never seen before: Brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear, Beauty so sudden for that time of year.

JOSEPH S. COTTER, JR.

“At Thanksgiving time 1894 Paul Laurence Dunbar, the Negro poet, was a guest in my house in Louisville, Ky. Here for the first time in the South he read the Negro dialect poems that afterwards made him famous.

September 2nd, 1895, my son, the late Joseph S. Cotter, Jr., was born in the room in which these poems were read. He learned to read and write from his sister, Florence Olivia, who was two years older. Before he entered school at the age of six years he had read about thirty books--these included all the readers in the elementary schools--1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8th grades and parts of the Bible.