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:
[11] From “Harlem Shadows” by Claude McKay, Copyright 1922, by
Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc.
[12] From “Harlem Shadows” by Claude McKay, Copyright 1922, by
Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc.
[13] From “Harlem Shadows” by Claude McKay, Copyright 1922, by
Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc.
[14] From “Harlem Shadows” by Claude McKay, Copyright 1922, by
Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc.
[15] From "Harlem Shadows" by Claude McKay, Copyright 1922, by
Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc.
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.
Mrs. Maria F. Cotter, my wife, and I held both children
back. We refused to allow them to be promoted in several
instances. Both were graduated from the Louisville Central
High School under 16; Florence Olivia won first honor
of her class and Joseph the second. He was graduated
June 1911. After a year and a half at Fisk University,
Nashville, Tenn., Florence Olivia wrote us that Joseph
had tuberculosis and must leave school. He returned home
and was put under a doctor. The 16th of the following
December, Florence Olivia returned from Fisk with tuberculosis,
and one year from that day she died. It was
grieving over his sister’s death that discovered to Joseph
his poetic talent. He died February 3rd, 1919, leaving
his published poems,--_The Band of Gideon_ and two
other unpublished works--one of poems and one of one-act
plays.”
_Joseph S. Cotter, Sr._
RAIN MUSIC
On the dusty earth-drum
Beats the falling rain;
Now a whispered murmur,
Now a louder strain.
Slender, silvery drumsticks.
On an ancient drum,
Beat the mellow music
Bidding life to come.
Chords of earth awakened,
Notes of greening spring,
Rise and fall triumphant
Over every thing.
Slender, silvery drumsticks
Beat the long tattoo--
God, the Great Musician,
Calling life anew.
SUPPLICATION
I am so tired and weary,
So tired of the endless fight,
So weary of waiting the dawn
And finding endless night.
That I ask but rest and quiet--
Rest for the days that are gone,
And quiet for the little space
That I must journey on.
AN APRIL DAY
On such a day as this I think,
On such a day as this,
When earth and sky and nature’s whole
Are clad in April’s bliss;
And balmy zephyrs gently waft
Upon your cheek a kiss;
Sufficient is it just to live
On such a day as this.
THE DESERTER
I know not why or whence he came
Or how he chanced to go;
I only know he brought me love
And going, left me woe.
I do not ask that he turn back,
Nor seek where he may rove;
For where woe rules can never be
The dwelling place of love.
For love went out the door of hope,
And on and on has fled;
Caring no more to dwell within
The house where faith is dead.
AND WHAT SHALL YOU SAY?
Brother, come!
And let us go unto our God.
And when we stand before Him
I shall say--
“Lord, I do not hate,
I am hated.
I scourge no one,
I am scourged.
I covet no lands,
My lands are coveted.
I mock no peoples,
My people are mocked.”
And, brother, what shall you say?
THE BAND OF GIDEON
The band of Gideon roam the sky,
The howling wind is their war-cry,
The thunder’s role is their trump’s peal,
And the lightning’s flash their vengeful steel.
Each black cloud
Is a fiery steed.
And they cry aloud
With each strong deed,
“The sword of the Lord and Gideon.”
And men below rear temples high
And mock their God with reasons why,
And live in arrogance, sin and shame,
And rape their souls for the world’s good name.
Each black cloud
Is a fiery steed.
And they cry aloud
With each strong deed,
“The sword of the Lord and Gideon.”
The band of Gideon roam the sky,
And view the earth with baleful eye;
In holy wrath they scourge the land
With earth-quake, storm and burning brand.
Each black cloud
Is a fiery steed.
And they cry aloud
With each strong deed,
“The sword of the Lord and Gideon.”
The lightnings flash and the thunders roll,
And “Lord have mercy on my soul,”
Cry men as they fall on the stricken sod,
In agony searching for their God.
Each black cloud
Is a fiery steed.
And they cry aloud
With each strong deed,
“The sword of the Lord and Gideon.”
And men repent and then forget
That heavenly wrath they ever met,
The band of Gideon yet will come
And strike their tongues of blasphemy dumb.
Each black cloud
Is a fiery steed.
And they cry aloud
With each strong deed,
“The sword of the Lord and Gideon.”
BLANCHE TAYLOR DICKINSON
I was born on a farm near Franklin, Kentucky, April
15, 1896, and received my education variously ... public
schools, Bowling Green Academy, Simmon’s University
and Summer schools.
No degree. Taught for several years in my native
state. I am a lover of music and divide my time between
the typewriter and piano. First published in _Franklin
Favorite_, later, _Louisville Leader_, _Chicago Defender_,
_Pittsburgh Courier_, _Crisis_, _Opportunity_ and _Wayfarer_. My
favorite poets are Countee Cullen, Georgia Douglas Johnson
and Edna St. Vincent Millay; my favorite past-time,
walking along a crowded street. I have a hunch that I
shall become a short story writer and my favorite exertion
is trying to perfect my “technique.”
At present I am living in Sewickley, Penna.
THE WALLS OF JERICHO
Jericho is on the inside
Of the things the world likes best;
“We want in,” the dark ones cried,
“We will love it as the rest.”
“Let me learn,” the dark ones say.
They have learned that Faith must do
More than meditate and pray
That a boulder may fall through
Making one large man size entrance
Into wondrous Jericho.
They have learned: forget the distance,
Count no steps, nor stop to blow.
Jericho still has her high wall,
Futile barrier of Power....
Echoed with the dark ones’ footfall
Marching around her every hour;
Knowledge strapped down like a knapsack
Not cumbersome, and money
Not too much to strain the back....
Dark ones seeking milk and honey.
Over in the city staring
Up at us along the wall
Are the fat ones, trembling, swearing
There is no room there for us all!
But there’ve been too many rounds
Made to give the trip up here.
Shout for joy ... hear how it sounds....
The very walls echo with cheer!
POEM
Ah, I know what happiness is...!
It is a timid little fawn
Creeping softly up to me
For one caress, then gone
Before I’m through with it ...
Away, like dark from dawn!
Well I know what happiness is...!
It is the break of day that wears
A shining dew decked diadem ...
An aftermath of tears.
Fawn and dawn, emblems of joy ...
I’ve played with them for years,
And always they will slip away
Into the brush of another day.
REVELATION
1
She walked along the crowded street
Forgetting all but that she
Was walking as the other girls
And dressed as carefully.
The windows of the stores were frilled
To lure femininity,
To empty little pocketbooks
And assuage queen vanity.
And so my walker liked a dress
Of silver and of gold,
Draped on a bisque mannequin
So blond and slim and bold.
She took the precious metal home
And waved her soft black hair;
Powder, rouge and lipstick made
Her very neat and fair.
She slipped the dress on carefully,
Her vain dream fell away....
The mirror showed a brownskin girl
She hadn’t seen all day!
2
“You have classic features,
Something like Cleopatra.
Eyes like whirlpools
And as dangerous....
Weeping willow eyelashes
Shade the mighty depth
Of your eyes. Your lips
Are danger signals
Which a fool like me
Will not regard....
But go dashing past them
To gain a kiss ... or Death.”
That is what he said to me,
I filled with a sweet and vain regret
That Beauty, the stranger, and I had met.
His praise was heat to drink me dry.
So I found a stream, and with a sigh
I stooped to drink ... ah, to see
The cruel water reflecting me!
Dark-eyed, thick-lipped, harsh, short hair ...
But Lucifer saw himself, too, fair.
THAT HILL
It crawled away from ’neath my feet
And left me standing there;
A little at a time, went up
An atmospheric stair.
I couldn’t go for watching it,
To see where it would stop;
A tree sprang out and waved to me
When it had reached the top.
The tree kept nodding friendly like,
Beckoning me to follow;
And I went crawling up and up,
Like it did from the hollow.
Then I saw why the thing would go
A-soaring from the dell--
’Twas nearing Heaven every bound,
And fleeing fast from Hell!
TO AN ICICLE
Chilled into a serenity
As rigid as your pose
You linger trustingly,
But a gutter waits for you.
Your elegance does not secure
You favors with the sun.
He is not one to pity fragileness.
He thinks all cheeks should burn
And feel how tears can run.
FOUR WALLS
Four great walls have hemmed me in.
Four strong, high walls:
Right and wrong,
Shall and shan’t.
The mighty pillars tremble when
My conscience palls
And sings its song--
I can, I can’t.
If for a moment Samson’s strength
Were given me I’d shove
Them away from where I stand;
Free, I know I’d love
To ramble soul and all,
And never dread to strike a wall.
Again, I wonder would that be
Such a happy state for me ...
The going, being, doing, sham--
And never knowing where I am.
I might not love freedom at all;
My tired wings might crave a wall--
Four walls to rise and pen me in
This conscious world with guarded men.
FRANK HORNE
“Born in New York City, August 18, 1899, I have lived
all but about six years in Brooklyn. I studied at the College
of the City of New York, and was guilty there of my
first sonnet; but am ever so much more proud of my varsity
letters won on the track--once ran a “10 flat” hundred and
a 51 sec. quarter. Went to the Northern Illinois College
of Ophthalmology--took degree “Doctor of Optometry.”
Have practiced in Chicago and New York. At present
writing, am doing some teaching and publicity work at the
Fort Valley High and Industrial School, Georgia, while
recovering from a mean illness. Have had a hankering
to write as long as I can remember, but Charles Johnson,
Editor of _Opportunity_ and a certain Gwendolyn Bennett
are responsible for my trying it openly. My “published
works” are limited to the indulgence of _Opportunity_, _The
Crisis_, and _Braithwaite’s Anthology_. It is the perversity
of my nature to crave the ability to write good prose,
and yet my attempts at poetry are the only things to which
any notice is given.”
ON SEEING TWO BROWN BOYS IN
A CATHOLIC CHURCH
It is fitting that you be here
Little brown boys
With Christ-like eyes
And curling hair.
Look you on yon crucifix
Where He hangs nailed and pierced
With head hung low
And eyes a’blind with blood that drips
From a thorny crown ...
Look you well,
You shall know this thing.
Judas’ kiss will burn your cheek
And you shall be denied
By your Peter--And
Gethsemane ...
You shall know full well
Gethsemane ...
You, too, will suffer under Pontius Pilate
And feel the rugged cut of rough hewn cross
Upon your surging shoulder--
They will spit in your face
And laugh ...
They will nail you up twixt thieves
And gamble for your little garments.
And in this you will exceed God
For on this earth
You shall know Hell--
O little brown boys
With Christ-like eyes
And curling hair
It is fitting that you be here.
TO A PERSISTENT PHANTOM
I buried you deeper last night
You with your tears
And your tangled hair
You with your lips
That kissed so fair
I buried you deeper last night.
I buried you deeper last night
With fuller breasts
And stronger arms
With softer lips
And newer charms
I buried you deeper last night.
Deeper ...... aye, deeper
And again tonight
Till that gay spirit
That once was you
Will tear its soul
In climbing through ...
Deeper ...... aye, deeper
I buried you deeper last night.
LETTERS FOUND NEAR A SUICIDE
_To all of you_
My little stone
Sinks quickly
Into the bosom of this deep, dark pool
Of oblivion ...
I have troubled its breast but little
Yet those far shores
That knew me not
Will feel the fleeting, furtive kiss
Of my tiny concentric ripples....
_To Lewellyn_