Chapter I: Want to Die While (2)

I did not think such words were bravado. Oh, I think honestly we knew no fear, Of Time or Death. We loved each other so. And thus, with you believing me, I made My prophecies, rebellious, unafraid.... And that was foolish, wasn’t it, my dear?

RETURN

I have gone back in boyish wonderment To things that I had foolishly put by.... Have found an alien and unknown content In seeing how some bits of cloud-filled sky Are framed in bracken pools; through chuckling hours Have watched the antic frogs, or curiously Have numbered all the unnamed, vagrant flowers, That fleck the unkempt meadows, lavishly.

Or where a headlong toppling stream has stayed Its racing, lulled to quiet by the song Bursting from out the thickleaved oaken shade, There I have lain while hours sauntered past-- I have found peacefulness somewhere at last, Have found a quiet needed for so long.

CLARISSA SCOTT DELANY

“I was born at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, in the Twentieth Century, and spent my early years in what is known as the ‘Black Belt.’ This was followed by seven years in New England (1916-1923), three at Bradford Academy, and four at Wellesley College, where my southern blood became tinged with something of the austerity of that section. Three years of teaching in the Dunbar High School of Washington, D. C., convinced me that though the children were interesting, teaching was not my _metier_. In the fall of 1926 I was married. Since completing a study of Delinquency and Neglect among Negro children in New York City, my career has been that of a wife, and as careers go, that is an interesting and absorbing one.”

JOY

Joy shakes me like the wind that lifts a sail, Like the roistering wind That laughs through stalwart pines. It floods me like the sun On rain-drenched trees That flash with silver and green.

I abandon myself to joy-- I laugh--I sing. Too long have I walked a desolate way, Too long stumbled down a maze Bewildered.

SOLACE

My window opens out into the trees And in that small space Of branches and of sky I see the seasons pass Behold the tender green Give way to darker heavier leaves. The glory of the autumn comes When steeped in mellow sunlight The fragile, golden leaves Against a clear blue sky Linger in the magic of the afternoon And then reluctantly break off And filter down to pave A street with gold. Then bare, gray branches Lift themselves against the Cold December sky Sometimes weaving a web Across the rose and dusk of late sunset Sometimes against a frail new moon And one bright star riding A sky of that dark, living blue Which comes before the heaviness Of night descends, or the stars Have powdered the heavens. Winds beat against these trees; The cold, but gentle rain of spring Touches them lightly The summer torrents strive To lash them into a fury And seek to break them-- But they stand. My life is fevered And a restlessness at times An agony--again a vague And baffling discontent Possesses me. I am thankful for my bit of sky And trees, and for the shifting Pageant of the seasons. Such beauty lays upon the heart A quiet. Such eternal change and permanence Take meaning from all turmoil And leave serenity Which knows no pain.

INTERIM

The night was made for rest and sleep, For winds that softly sigh; It was not made for grief and tears; So then why do I cry?

The wind that blows through leafy trees Is soft and warm and sweet; For me the night is a gracious cloak To hide my soul’s defeat.

Just one dark hour of shaken depths, Of bitter black despair-- Another day will find me brave, And not afraid to dare.

THE MASK

So detached and cool she is No motion e’er betrays The secret life within her soul, The anguish of her days.

She seems to look upon the world With cold ironic eyes, To spurn emotion’s fevered sway, To scoff at tears and sighs.

But once a woman with a child Passed by her on the street, And once she heard from casual lips A man’s name, bitter-sweet.

Such baffled yearning in her eyes, Such pain upon her face! I turned aside until the mask Was slipped once more in place.

LANGSTON HUGHES

Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, on the first of February, 1902. His mother was a school teacher, his father a lawyer. During most of his childhood he lived with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas, where he went to school. This old lady, Mary Sampson Patterson Leary Langston, was the last surviving widow of John Brown’s Raid, her first husband having been one of the five colored men to die so gloriously at Harper’s Ferry. She had then married Charles Langston, brother of the Negro senator, John M. Langston, and in the seventies they came to Kansas where the mother of the poet was born.

When Langston Hughes was thirteen this grandmother died and the boy went to live with his mother in Lincoln, Illinois. A year later they moved to Cleveland where he attended and was graduated from the Central High School. Then followed fifteen months in Mexico where his father had been located for some years. Here the young man learned Spanish, taught English, and attended bull-fights. Here, too, he wrote “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” his first poem to be published in the magazines.

In 1921 he went to New York for a year at Columbia University. A break with his father followed and he secured work for the summer on a truck farm on Staten Island. Then for almost two years he travelled as a member of the crew of freight steamers voyaging to the West Coast of Africa and Northern Europe. In February, 1924, he went to Paris. When he arrived he had seven dollars in his pockets; so he soon found a job as doorman in a Montmartre cabaret. Later he became second cook and pan-cake maker at the Grand Duc, a Negro night club where Buddy Gilmore sometimes played and Florence sang. That summer he went to Italy, and September found him stranded in Genoa. He worked his way back to New York on a tramp steamer, painting and scrubbing decks.

A year in Washington followed where he worked in the office of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, and later as a bus boy at the Wardman Park Hotel. There Vachel Lindsay read some of his poems and he was discovered by the newspapers. Then his first book, _The Weary Blues_, appeared. He has now resumed his formal education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, which he says is a place of beauty and the ideal college for a poet. His second book of poems, _Fine Clothes for the Jew_, is a study in racial rhythms.

Lincoln University April 13, 1927

I, TOO[16]

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong.

Tomorrow, I’ll sit at the table When company comes. Nobody’ll dare Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen,” Then.

Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed,--

I, too, am America.

PRAYER[17]

I ask you this: Which way to go? I ask you this: Which sin to bear? Which crown to put Upon my hair? I do not know, Lord God, I do not know.

SONG FOR A DARK GIRL[18]

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.

HOMESICK BLUES[19]

De railroad bridge’s A sad song in de air. De railroad bridge’s A sad song in de air. Ever time de trains pass I wants to go somewhere.

I went down to de station. Ma heart was in ma mouth. Went down to de station. Heart was in ma mouth. Lookin’ for a box car To roll me to de South.

Homesick blues, Lawd, ’S a terrible thing to have. Homesick blues is A terrible thing to have. To keep from cryin’ I opens ma mouth an’ laughs.

FANTASY IN PURPLE[20]

Beat the drums of tragedy for me. Beat the drums of tragedy and death. And let the choir sing a stormy song To drown the rattle of my dying breath.

Beat the drums of tragedy for me, And let the white violins whir thin and slow, But blow one blaring trumpet note of sun To go with me to the darkness where I go.

DREAM VARIATION[21]

To fling my arms wide In some place of the sun, To whirl and to dance Till the white day is done. Then rest at cool evening Beneath a tall tree While night comes on gently, Dark like me,-- That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide In the face of the sun, Dance! whirl! whirl! Till the quick day is done. Rest at pale evening.... A tall, slim tree.... Night coming tenderly Black like me.

THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS[22]

I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

POEM[23]

The night is beautiful, So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful, So the eyes of my people.

Beautiful, also, is the sun. Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

SUICIDE’S NOTE[24]

The calm, Cool face of the river Asked me for a kiss.

MOTHER TO SON[25]

Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor-- Bare. But all the time I’s been a-climbin’ on, And reachin’ landin’s, And turnin’ corners, And sometimes goin’ in the dark Where there ain’t been no light. So boy, don’t you turn back. Don’t you set down on the steps ’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard. Don’t you fall now-- For I’s still goin’, honey, I’s still climbin’, And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

A HOUSE IN TAOS

_Rain_
Thunder of the Rain God:
And we three
Smitten by beauty.

Thunder of the Rain God:
And we three
Weary, weary.

Thunder of the Rain God:
And you, she and I
Waiting for nothingness.

Do you understand the stillness Of this house in Taos Under the thunder of the Rain God?

_Sun_ That there should be a barren garden About his house in Taos Is not so strange, But that there should be three barren hearts In this one house in Taos,-- Who carries ugly things to show the sun?

_Moon_ Did you ask for the beaten brass of the moon? We can buy lovely things with money, You, she and I, Yet you seek, As though you could keep, This unbought loveliness of moon.

_Wind_ Touch our bodies, wind. Our bodies are separate, individual things. Touch our bodies, wind, But blow quickly Through the red, white, yellow skins Of our bodies To the terrible snarl, Not mine, Not yours, Not hers, But all one snarl of souls. Blow quickly, wind, Before we run back into the windlessness,-- With our bodies,-- Into the windlessness Of our house in Taos.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., authorized publishers.

[17] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf. Inc., authorized publishers.

[18] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., authorized publishers.

[19] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., authorized publishers.

[20] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., authorized publishers.

[21] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., authorized publishers.

[22] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., authorized publishers.

[23] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., authorized publishers.

[24] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., authorized publishers.

[25] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., authorized publishers.

GWENDOLYN B. BENNETT

Gwendolyn B. Bennett was born in Giddings, Texas, on July 8th, 1902. Her father was a lawyer and her mother was a school teacher. She received her elementary training in the Public Schools of Washington, D. C., and Harrisburg, Pa. She was graduated from the Girls’ High School in Brooklyn, New York, during January, 1921. While she was in attendance there she was a member of the Felter Literary Society and the Girls’ High School Dramatic Society, being the first Negro girl to have been elected to either of these societies. In an open contest she was awarded the first prize for a poster bearing the slogan _Fresh Air Prevents Tuberculosis_.

She matriculated in the Fine Arts Department of Teachers’ College, Columbia University, where she remained for two years. She then entered the Normal Art Course at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York. She was the author of her class play each of the two years she was there. In her Junior Year she played the leading part in the play which she had herself written. She was graduated from Pratt Institute June 1924.

She then became a member of the Howard University Faculty in Fine Arts as Instructor in Design, Water-color and Crafts. During the Christmas holidays of the school year 1924-25 Miss Bennett was awarded the Thousand Dollar Foreign Scholarship by the Alpha Sigma Chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority at its Annual Convention held in New York City.

She sailed for Cherbourg, France on June fifteenth, 1925. While in Paris she studied at the Académie Julian, The Académie Coloraossi and the École de Pantheon. Through the influence of Konrad Bercovici she was thrown in contact with the artist, Frans Masereel, one of France’s best known modern painters. M. and Mme. Masereel offered Miss Bennett the hospitality of their home and together with their circle of friends did much to encourage her in her work while in Paris. She returned to America during June 1926.

For the summer of 1926 she was employed at the _Opportunity_ magazine where she acted in the capacity of Assistant to the Editor. September 1926 she returned to Howard University where she resumed her classroom work after a year’s leave of absence.

QUATRAINS

1

Brushes and paints are all I have To speak the music in my soul-- While silently there laughs at me A copper jar beside a pale green bowl.

2

How strange that grass should sing-- Grass is so still a thing.... And strange the swift surprise of snow So soft it falls and slow.

SECRET

I shall make a song like your hair ... Gold-woven with shadows green-tinged, And I shall play with my song As my fingers might play with your hair. Deep in my heart I shall play with my song of you, _Gently_.... I shall laugh At its sensitive lustre ... I shall wrap my song in a blanket, Blue like your eyes are blue With tiny shots of silver. I shall wrap it caressingly, _Tenderly_.... I shall sing a lullaby To the song I have made Of your hair and eyes ... And you will never know That deep in my heart I shelter a song of you _Secretly_....

ADVICE

You were a sophist, Pale and quite remote, As you bade me Write poems-- Brown poems Of dark words And prehistoric rhythms ... Your pallor stifled my poesy But I remembered a tapestry That I would some day weave Of dim purples and fine reds And blues Like night and death-- The keen precision of your words Wove a silver thread Through the dusk softness Of my dream-stuff....

TO A DARK GIRL

I love you for your brownness And the rounded darkness of your breast. I love you for the breaking sadness in your voice And shadows where your wayward eye-lids rest.

Something of old forgotten queens Lurks in the lithe abandon of your walk And something of the shackled slave Sobs in the rhythm of your talk.

Oh, little brown girl, born for sorrow’s mate, Keep all you have of queenliness, Forgetting that you once were slave, And let your full lips laugh at Fate!

YOUR SONGS

When first you sang a song to me With laughter shining from your eyes, You trolled your music liltingly With cadences of glad surprise.

In after years I heard you croon In measures delicately slow Of trees turned silver by the moon And nocturnes sprites and lovers know.

And now I cannot hear you sing, But love still holds your melody For silence is a sounding thing To one who listens hungrily.

FANTASY

I sailed in my dreams to the Land of Night Where you were the dusk-eyed queen, And there in the pallor of moon-veiled light The loveliest things were seen ...

A slim-necked peacock sauntered there In a garden of lavender hues, And you were strange with your purple hair As you sat in your amethyst chair With your feet in your hyacinth shoes.

Oh, the moon gave a bluish light Through the trees in the land of dreams and night. I stood behind a bush of yellow-green And whistled a song to the dark-haired queen ...

LINES WRITTEN AT THE GRAVE OF ALEXANDER DUMAS

Cemeteries are places for departed souls And bones interred, Or hearts with shattered loves. A woman with lips made warm for laughter Would find grey stones and roving spirits Too chill for living, moving pulses ... And thou, great spirit, wouldst shiver in thy granite shroud Should idle mirth or empty talk Disturb thy tranquil sleeping.

A cemetery is a place for shattered loves And broken hearts.... Bowed before the crystal chalice of thy soul, I find the multi-colored fragrance of thy mind Has lost itself in Death’s transparency.

Oh, stir the lucid waters of thy sleep And coin for me a tale Of happy loves and gems and joyous limbs And hearts where love is sweet!

A cemetery is a place for broken hearts And silent thought ... And silence never moves, Nor speaks nor sings.

HATRED

I shall hate you Like a dart of singing steel Shot through still air At even-tide. Or solemnly As pines are sober When they stand etched Against the sky. Hating you shall be a game Played with cool hands And slim fingers. Your heart will yearn For the lonely splendor Of the pine tree; While rekindled fires In my eyes Shall wound you like swift arrows. Memory will lay its hands Upon your breast And you will understand My hatred.

SONNET

1

He came in silvern armour, trimmed with black-- A lover come from legends long ago--With silver spurs and silken plumes a-blow, And flashing sword caught fast and buckled back In a carven sheath of Tamarack. He came with footsteps beautifully slow, And spoke in voice meticulously low. He came and Romance followed in his track....

I did not ask his name--I thought him Love; I did not care to see his hidden face. All life seemed born in my intaken breath; All thought seemed flown like some forgotten dove. He bent to kiss and raised his visor’s lace ... All eager-lipped I kissed the mouth of Death.

SONNET

2

Some things are very dear to me-- Such things as flowers bathed by rain Or patterns traced upon the sea Or crocuses where snow has lain ... The iridescence of a gem, The moon’s cool opalescent light, Azaleas and the scent of them, And honeysuckles in the night. And many sounds are also dear-- Like winds that sing among the trees Or crickets calling from the weir Or Negroes humming melodies. But dearer far than all surmise Are sudden tear-drops in your eyes.

ARNA BONTEMPS

Arna Bontemps explains that he was just tall enough to see above window sills when the first trolley car came down Lee Street in Alexandria, La. His mother, Marie Pembroke, had been born in this same town but his father had come out of Marksville, a smaller town of that state. Though exceedingly young and very frail, Marie Pembroke had taught school until her marriage, while her husband, Paul Bontemps, was a brick mason, the son and grandson of brick masons.

With Arna Bontemps in his third year and a second child, a girl, just past one, the family left the South for San Francisco. However, they stopped in Los Angeles to visit relatives and have never moved further. Here the boy’s mother died some nine years later and here his father is still living. Here also he received his early education in a rather irregular attendance of a number of schools. He went through the schools rapidly enough and in spite of being out several years received a college degree in his twentieth year.

In the year following that he lost his illusions with reference to a musical career and returned to an original intention to eat bread by the sweat of teaching school. It is to be remembered that he went to college first with the purpose of taking a medical course but it took him only a day or two to decide better.

He lives in New York City and is now twenty-four and married.

THE RETURN

I

Once more, listening to the wind and rain, Once more, you and I, and above the hurting sound Of these comes back the throbbing of remembered rain, Treasured rain falling on dark ground. Once more, huddling birds upon the leaves And summer trembling on a withered vine. And once more, returning out of pain, The friendly ghost that was your love and mine.

II

Darkness brings the jungle to our room: The throb of rain is the throb of muffled drums. Darkness hangs our room with pendulums Of vine and in the gathering gloom Our walls recede into a denseness of Surrounding trees. This is a night of love Retained from those lost nights our fathers slept In huts; this is a night that must not die. Let us keep the dance of rain our fathers kept And tread our dreams beneath the jungle sky.

III

And now the downpour ceases. Let us go back once more upon the glimmering leaves And as the throbbing of the drums increases Shake the grass and dripping boughs of trees. A dry wind stirs the palm; the old tree grieves.

_Time has charged the years: the old days have returned._

Let us dance by metal waters burned With gold of moon, let us dance With naked feet beneath the young spice trees. What was that light, that radiance On your face?--something I saw when first You passed beneath the jungle tapestries?

A moment we pause to quench our thirst Kneeling at the water’s edge, the gleam Upon your face is plain: you have wanted this. Let us go back and search the tangled dream And as the muffled drum-beats throb and miss Remember again how early darkness comes To dreams and silence to the drums.

IV

Let us go back into the dusk again, Slow and sad-like following the track Of blowing leaves and cool white rain Into the old gray dream, let us go back. Our walls close about us we lie and listen To the noise of the street, the storm and the driven birds. A question shapes your lips, your eyes glisten Retaining tears, but there are no more words.

A BLACK MAN TALKS OF REAPING

I have sown beside all waters in my day. I planted deep, within my heart the fear That wind or fowl would take the grain away. I planted safe against this stark, lean year.

I scattered seed enough to plant the land In rows from Canada to Mexico But for my reaping only what the hand Can hold at once is all that I can show.

Yet what I sowed and what the orchard yields My brother’s sons are gathering stalk and root, Small wonder then my children glean in fields They have not sown, and feed on bitter fruit.

TO A YOUNG GIRL LEAVING THE HILL COUNTRY

The hills are wroth; the stones have scored you bitterly Because you looked upon the naked sun Oblivious of them, because you did not see The trees you touched or mountains that you walked upon.

But there will come a day of darkness in the land, A day wherein remembered sun alone comes through To mark the hills; then perhaps you’ll understand Just how it was you drew from them and they from you.

For there will be a bent old woman in that day Who, feeling something of this country in her bones, Will leave her house tapping with a stick, who will (they say) Come back to seek the girl she was in these familiar stones.

NOCTURNE AT BETHESDA

I thought I saw an angel flying low, I thought I saw the flicker of a wing Above the mulberry trees; but not again. Bethesda sleeps. This ancient pool that healed A host of bearded Jews does not awake. This pool that once the angels troubled does not move. No angel stirs it now, no Saviour comes With healing in His hands to raise the sick And bid the lame man leap upon the ground.

The golden days are gone. Why do we wait So long upon the marble steps, blood Falling from our open wounds? and why Do our black faces search the empty sky? Is there something we have forgotten? some precious thing We have lost, wandering in strange lands?

There was a day, I remember now, I beat my breast and cried, “Wash me God, Wash me with a wave of wind upon The barley; O quiet One, draw near, draw near! Walk upon the hills with lovely feet And in the waterfall stand and speak.

“Dip white hands in the lily pool and mourn Upon the harps still hanging in the trees Near Babylon along the river’s edge, But oh, remember me, I pray, before The summer goes and rose leaves lose their red.”

The old terror takes my heart, the fear Of quiet waters and of faint twilights. There will be better days when I am gone And healing pools where I cannot be healed. Fragrant stars will gleam forever and ever Above the place where I lie desolate.

Yet I hope, still I long to live. And if there can be returning after death I shall come back. But it will not be here; If you want me you must search for me Beneath the palms of Africa. Or if I am not there then you may call to me Across the shining dunes, perhaps I shall Be following a desert caravan.

I may pass through centuries of death With quiet eyes, but I’ll remember still A jungle tree with burning scarlet birds. There is something I have forgotten, some precious thing. I shall be seeking ornaments of ivory, I shall be dying for a jungle fruit.

You do not hear, Bethesda. O still green water in a stagnant pool! Love abandoned you and me alike. There was a day you held a rich full moon Upon your heart and listened to the words Of men now dead and saw the angels fly. There is a simple story on your face; Years have wrinkled you. I know, Bethesda! You are sad. It is the same with me.

LENGTH OF MOON

Then the golden hour Will tick its last And the flame will go down in the flower.

A briefer length of moon Will mark the sea-line and the yellow dune.

Then we may think of this, yet There will be something forgotten And something we should forget.

It will be like all things we know: The stone will fail; a rose is sure to go.

It will be quiet then and we may stay As long at the picket gate But there will be less to say.

LANCELOT

The fruit of the orchard is over-ripe, Elaine, And leaves are crisping on the garden wall. Leaves on the garden path are wet and rain Drips from the low shrubs with a steady fall.

It is long, so long since I was here, Elaine, Moles have gnawed the rose tree at its root; You did not think that I would come again, Least of all in the day of falling fruit.

GETHSEMANE

All that night I walked alone and wept. I tore a rose and dropped it on the ground. My heart was lead; all that night I kept Listening to hear a dreadful sound.

A tree bent down and dew dripped from its hair. The earth was warm; dawn came solemnly. I stretched full-length upon the grass and there I said your name but silence answered me.

A TREE DESIGN

A tree is more than a shadow Blurred against the sky, More than ink spilled on the fringe Of white clouds floating by. A tree is more than an April design Or a blighted winter bough Where love and music used to be. A tree is something in me, Very still and lonely now.

BLIGHT

I have seen a lovely thing Stark before a whip of weather: The tree that was so wistful after spring Beating barren twigs together.

The birds that came there one by one, The sensuous leaves that used to sway And whisper there at night, all are gone, Each has vanished in its way.

And this whip is on my heart; There is no sound that it allows, No little song that I may start But I hear the beating of dead boughs.

THE DAY-BREAKERS

We are not come to wage a strife With swords upon this hill. It is not wise to waste the life Against a stubborn will. Yet would we die as some have done: Beating a way for the rising sun.

CLOSE YOUR EYES!

Go through the gates with closed eyes. Stand erect and let your black face front the west. Drop the axe and leave the timber where it lies; A woodman on the hill must have his rest.

Go where leaves are lying brown and wet. Forget her warm arms and her breast who mothered you, And every face you ever loved forget. Close your eyes; walk bravely through.

GOD GIVE TO MEN

God give the yellow man An easy breeze at blossom time. Grant his eager, slanting eyes to cover Every land and dream Of afterwhile.

Give blue-eyed men their swivel chairs To whirl in tall buildings. Allow them many ships at sea, And on land, soldiers And policemen.

For black man, God, No need to bother more But only fill afresh his meed Of laughter, His cup of tears.

God suffer little men The taste of soul’s desire.

HOMING

Sweet timber land Where soft winds blow The high green tree And fan away the fog! Ah fragrant stream Where thirsty creatures go And strong black men Hew the heavy log!

Oh broken house Crumbling there alone, Wanting me! Oh silent tree Must I always be A wild bird Riding the wind And screaming bitterly?

GOLGOTHA IS A MOUNTAIN

Golgotha is a mountain, a purple mound Almost out of sight. One night they hanged two thieves there, And another man. Some women wept heavily that night; Their tears are flowing still. They have made a river; Once it covered me. Then the people went away and left Golgotha Deserted. Oh, I’ve seen many mountains: Pale purple mountains melting in the evening mists and blurring on the borders of the sky. I climbed old Shasta and chilled my hands in its summer snows. I rested in the shadow of Popocatepetl and it whispered to me of daring prowess. I looked upon the Pyrenees and felt the zest of warm exotic nights. I slept at the foot of Fujiyama and dreamed of legend and of death. And I’ve seen other mountains rising from the wistful moors like the breasts of a slender maiden. Who knows the mystery of mountains! Some of them are awful, others are just lonely.

* * * * *

Italy has its Rome and California has San Francisco, All covered with mountains. Some think these mountains grew Like ant hills Or sand dunes. That might be so-- I wonder what started them all! Babylon is a mountain And so is Ninevah, With grass growing on them; Palaces and hanging gardens started them. I wonder what is under the hills In Mexico And Japan! There are mountains in Africa too. Treasure is buried there: Gold and precious stones And moulded glory. Lush grass is growing there Sinking before the wind. Black men are bowing. Naked in that grass Digging with their fingers. I am one of them: Those mountains should be ours. It would be great To touch the pieces of glory with our hands. These mute unhappy hills, Bowed down with broken backs, Speak often one to another: “A day is as a year,” they cry, “And a thousand years as one day.” We watched the caravan That bore our queen to the courts of Solomon; And when the first slave traders came We bowed our heads. “Oh, Brothers, it is not long! Dust shall yet devour the stones But we shall be here when they are gone.” Mountains are rising all around me. Some are so small they are not seen; Others are large. All of them get big in time and people forget What started them at first. Oh the world is covered with mountains! Beneath each one there is something buried: Some pile of wreckage that started it there. Mountains are lonely and some are awful.

* * * * *

One day I will crumble. They’ll cover my heap with dirt and that will make a mountain. I think it will be Golgotha.

ALBERT RICE

I am a native of our Capital City, born in the Mauve Decade (1903). My schooling has been in the Washington grammar and high schools. It was while a student at Dunbar High School that I felt a restless urge to write something other than dull formal paragraphs in English. I made several attempts at verse but found them so poor that I hastily put such ideas behind me.

After leaving high school I entered the government service in Washington, but my radical views could not become reconciled to the conservative bourgeoise ideals around me; so I left the government service and journeyed to New York in the winter of 1926. Here I served an apprenticeship in literary vagabondage with the bizarre and eccentric young vagabond poet of High Harlem, Richard Bruce. It was here that I felt inspired to write “The Black Madonna.” I was one evening at vespers down at St. Mary’s the Virgin, and while lost in contemplation before Our Lady, I thought of a Madonna of swart skin, a Madonna of dark mien.

Despite my radicalism I am religious. I admire the socialist form of government, and my favorite poet is Claude McKay. And some day I hope to flee the shores of this exquisite hell. My temperament is Latin. I abhor all things Anglo-Saxon. I’d rather live in the squalor of Mulberry Street, N. Y. (Little Italy) than at Irvington-on-the-Hudson. I love bull fights and dislike baseball games. I like dancing and dislike prayer meetings. I love New York because it is crowded and noisy and an outpost of Europe. Of my home here in Washington I have not much to offer. I like Washington because it has such a large share of Babbitts, both white and black. And I like it because Georgia Douglas Johnson lives there and on Saturday nights has an assembly of likable and civilized people, and because it was from this Saturday night circle that Jean Toomer, Richard Bruce, and Richard Goodwin, the artist, went forth to fame and infamy.

THE BLACK MADONNA

Not as the white nations
know thee
O Mother!

But swarthy of cheek
and full-lipped as the
child races are.

Yet thou art she,
the Immaculate Maid,
and none other,

Crowned in the stable
at Bethlehem,
hailed of the star.

See where they come,
thy people,
so humbly appealing,

From the ancient lands
where the olden faiths
had birth.

Tired dusky hands
uplifted for thy
healing.

Pity them, Mother,
the untaught
of earth.

COUNTEE CULLEN

Born in New York City, May 30, 1903, and reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage, Countee Cullen’s chief problem has been that of reconciling a Christian upbringing with a pagan inclination. His life so far has not convinced him that the problem is insoluble. Educated in the elementary and high schools of New York City, with an A.B. degree and a Phi Beta Kappa Key from New York University, an M.A. from Harvard, arrantly opposed to any form of enforced racial segregation, he finds it a matter of growing regret that no part of his academic education has been drawn from a racial school. As a poet he is a rank conservative, loving the measured line and the skillful rhyme; but not blind to the virtues of those poets who will not be circumscribed; and he is thankful indeed for the knowledge that should he ever desire to go adventuring, the world is rife with paths to choose from. He has said, perhaps with a reiteration sickening to some of his friends, that he wishes any merit that may be in his work to flow from it solely as the expression of a poet--with no racial consideration to bolster it up. He is still of the same thought. At present he is employed as Assistant Editor of _Opportunity, A Journal of Negro Life_.

His published works are _Color_, _The Ballad of the Brown Girl_, and _Copper Sun_.

LINES TO OUR ELDERS

You too listless to examine If in pestilence or famine Death lurk least, a hungry gamin Gnawing on you like a beaver On a root, while you trifle Time away nodding in the sun, Careless how the shadows crawl Surely up your crumbling wall, Heedless of the Thief’s footfall, Death’s, whose nimble fingers rifle Your heartbeats one by weary one,-- Here’s the difference in our dying: You go dawdling, we go flying. Here’s a thought flung out to plague you: Ours the pleasure if we’d liever Burn completely with the fever Than go ambling with the ague.