Chapter 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.