Claude McKay

“ All yesterday it poured, and all night long
I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat
Upon the shingled roof like a weird song,
Upon the grass like running children’s feet.
And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed,
Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,
Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist,
And nestled soft against the earth’s wet breast.
But lo, there was a miracle at dawn!
The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze,
The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn,
The songsters twittered in the rustling trees.
And all things were transfigured in the day, ”

“ The poinsettia's red, blood-red in warm December.
What weeks, what months, what time o' 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. ”

“ Frank Harris shouted. "A damned traitor to your own integrity. That's what the English and civilization have done to your people. Emasculated them. Deprived them of their guts. Better you were a head-hunting, blood-drinking cannibal of the jungle than a civilized coward. You were bolder in America. The English make obscene sycophants of their subject peoples. I am Irish and I know. But we Irish have guts the English cannot rip out of us. I'm ashamed of you, sir. It's a good thing you got out of England. It is no place for a genius to live." ”

“ There time and life move lazily along;
There by the banks of blue-and-silver streams
Grass-sheltered crickets chirp incessant song,
Gay-coloured lizards loll all through the day,
Their tongues outstretched for careless little flies,
And swarthy children in the fields at play
Look upward laughing at the smiling skies.
A breath of idleness is in the air
That casts a subtle spell upon all things,
And love and mating-time are everywhere
And wonder to life's commonplaces clings. ”

“ I plucked my soul out of its secret place,
And held it to the mirror of my eye,
To see it like a star against the sky,
A twitching body quivering in space,
A spark of passion shining on my face.
And I explored it to determine why
This awful key to my infinity
Conspires to rob me of sweet joy and grace.
And if the sign may not be fully read,
If I can comprehend but not control,
I need not gloom my days with futile dread,
Because I see a part and not the whole.
Contemplating the strange, I’m comforted
By this narcotic thought: I know my soul. ”

“ Where the old draft-horse is neighing, neighing, neighing
⁠Out on the brown dew-silvered lawn,
⁠And the tethered cow is lowing, lowing, lowing,
And dear old Ned is braying, braying, braying,
And the shaggy Nannie goat is calling, calling, calling
⁠From her little trampled corner of the long wide lea
That stretches to the waters of the hill-stream falling
⁠Sheer upon the flat rocks joyously!
⁠There, oh there! on the island of the sea
⁠There I would be at dawn.
⁠The tired cars go grumbling by,
⁠The crazy, lazy cars,
⁠And the same milk-carts go rumbling by
⁠Under the dying stars. ”

“ Always a poet in action, he became a poet in words: "Comrade McKay, you must stay in Russia. We want you. All Russia loves you, not we Communists only, but even the damned bourgeoisie. Tell us, Comrade McKay, why is it you have bewitched us? Tell us, Comrade McKay, what is it? Is it the black magic we have heard about? Comrade McKay, we are bewitched, men, women and children. We all love you, we all want you. Oh, do stay with us forever! Comrade McKay, you must leave Moscow and see Russia. ”

“ When still the dawn’s a silver sea of light.
Your lips betray the secret of your soul,
The dark delicious essence that is you,
A mystery of life, the flaming goal
I seek through mazy pathways strange and new.
Your lips are the red symbol of a dream.
What visions of warm lilies they impart,
That line the green bank of a fair blue stream,
With butterflies and bees close to each heart!
Brown bees that murmur sounds of music rare,
That softly fall upon the languorous breeze,
Wafting them gently on the quiet air
Among untended avenues of trees.{69} ”

“ In Russia I was alertly aware that it was something different from anything that ever was, that officially it was the highest privilege I could have in the world, to be shown the inside working of the greatest social experiment in the history of civilization. I was fired and uplifted by the thundering mass movement of the people, their boisterous surging forward, with their heads held high, their arms outstretched in an eager quest for more light, more air, more space, more glory, more nourishment and comfort for the millions of the masses. ”

“ Socialism should step in to bridge the gulf which has been created between white and coloured workers by Capitalism and its servant, Christianity. There is plenty of work to be done, and no time should be lost, for who knows when the storm will break?–when rivers of blood will flow, bearing the souls of white and black workers into eternity? Then, perhaps, the Anglo-Saxon world will wake up to find, all at once, a thousand Amritsars on its hands!
CLAUDE McKAY ”

“ 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{50}—
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 ”

“ Without the slightest feeling of antagonism to my critic, I would suggest to her that vicarious stories of "passing white" are merely of slight importance to the great group of fifteen millions who are obviously Negroes. I would suggest to her that if she really desires to make a unique contribution to American literature, she has a chance of doing something that no Negro can—something that might be worthwhile for her daughter to read: she might write a sincere account of what it means for an educated and sensitive white woman to be the wife of a Negro in America. ”

“ The zest of life exceeds the bound of laws.
New gales of tropic fury round my head
Break lashing me through hours of soulful dread;
But when the terror thins and, spent, withdraws,
Leaving me wondering awhile, I pause—
But soon again the risky ways I tread!
No rigid road for me, no peace, no rest,
While molten elements run through my blood;
And beauty-burning bodies manifest
Their warm, heart-melting motions to be wooed ”

“ I am entirely un-obsessed by sex. I am not an imitator of Anglo-Saxon prudery in writing. I haven't arrived at that high degree of civilized culture where I can make a success of producing writing carefully divorced from reality. Yet I couldn't indulge in such self-flattery as to claim Jake in Home to Harlem as a portrait of myself. My damned white education has robbed me of much of the primitive vitality, the pure stamina, the simple unswaggering strength of the Jakes of the Negro race. ”

“ Like a blue-bird’s note in a March wind, those sudden clear thoughts of the warm South ring out in the midst of his northern songs. They carry a thrill into the depth of our hearts. Perhaps in some sense they are thoughts of a mother. At least it seems inevitable that we should find among them those two sacred sonnets of a child’s bereavement. It seems inevitable that a wonderful poet should have had a wise and beautiful mother. ”

“ I could locate none of my close railroad friends. But I found Sanina. Sanina was an attractive quadroon from Jamaica who could pass as white. Before prohibition she presided over a buffet flat. Now she animated a cosy speakeasy. Her rendezvous on upper Seventh Avenue, with its pink curtains and spreads, created an artificial rose-garden effect. It was always humming like a beehive with brown butterflies and flames of all ages from the West Indies and from the South.
Sanina infatuated them all. She possessed the cunning and fascination of a serpent, and more charm than beauty. ”

“ There is no special or exotic kind of merit in them, no quality that demands a transmutation of our own natures to perceive. Just as the sculptures and wood and ivory carvings of the vast forgotten African Empires of Ifé and Benin, although so wistful in their tranquillity, are tranquil in the possession of the qualities of all classic and great art, so these poems, the purest of them, move with a sovereignty that is never new to the lovers of the high music of human utterance. ”

“ The Dawn! My spirit to its spirit thrills.
Almost the mighty city is asleep,
No pushing crowd, no tramping, tramping feet.
But here and there a few cars groaning creep
Along, above, and underneath the street,
Bearing their strangely-ghostly burdens by,
The women and the men of garish nights,
Their eyes wine-weakened and their clothes awry,
Grotesques beneath the strong electric lights.
The shadows wane. The Dawn comes to New York.
And I go darkly-rebel to my work.
{44} THE TIRED WORKER
O whisper, O my soul! ”

“ It was a relief to get to Marseilles, to live in among a great gang of black and brown humanity. Negroids from the United States, the West Indies, North Africa and West Africa, all herded together in a warm group. Negroid features and complexions, not exotic, creating curiosity and hostility, but unique and natural to a group. The odors of dark bodies sweating through a day's hard work, like the odor of stabled horses, were not unpleasant even in a crowded café. ”

“ The name of Lansbury was symbolic of all that was simon-pure, pious and self-righteous in the British Labor movement. As the boss of the Daily Herald, he stood at the center like an old bearded angel of picturesque honesty, with his right arm around the neck of the big trade-union leaders and Parliamentarians and his left waving to the Independent Labor partyites and all the radical Left. Like a little cat up against a big dog, the Workers' Dreadnought was always spitting at the Daily Herald. ”

“ Not mortal, a flower, a fairy, too fair for the beauty-shorn earth.
All wonderful things, all beautiful things, gave of their wealth to your birth.
⁠Oh I love you so much, not recking of passion, that I feel it is wrong!
⁠But men will love you, flower, fairy, non-mortal spirit burdened with flesh,
⁠Forever, life-long. ”

“ When a white person speaks of Walter White as a Negro, as if that made him a being physically different from a white, I get a weird and impish feeling of the unreality of phenomena. And when a colored person refers to Walter White as colored, in a tone that implies him to be physically different from and inferior to the "pure" white person, I feel that life is sublimely funny. ”

“ A West Indian charlatan came to this country, full of antiquated social ideas; yet within a decade he aroused the social consciousness of the Negro masses more than any leader ever did. When Negroes really desire a new group orientation they will create it.
Such is my opinion for all that it may be worth. I suppose I have a poet's right to imagine a great modern Negro leader. At least I would like to celebrate him in a monument of verse. For I have nothing to give but my singing. All my life I have been a troubadour wanderer, nourishing myself mainly on the poetry of existence. ”

“ With the blood of these rebels in his veins, and their memory to stir it, we cannot wonder that Claude McKay’s earliest boyish songs in the Jamaica dialect were full of heresy and the militant love of freedom, and that his first poem of political significance should have been a rally-call to the street-car men on strike in Kingston. He found himself by an instinctive gravitation singing in the forefront of the battle for human liberty. A wider experience and a man’s comprehension of the science of history has only strengthened his voice and his resolution. ”