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.