Countee Cullen

“ Whose clash the hemmed-in vale with clamor fills, [31]
With greater din contended fierce majestic wills
Of beast with beast, of man with man, in strife
For love of what my heart despised, for life
That unto me at dawn was now a prayer
For night, at night a bloody heart-wrung tear
For day again; for this, these groans
From tangled flesh and interlockèd bones.
And no thing died that did not give
A testimony that it longed to live.
Man, strange composite blend of brute and god,
Pushed on, nor backward glanced where last he trod. ”

“ For I was born on Saturday—
“Bad time for planting a seed,”
Was all my father had to say,
And, “One mouth more to feed.”
Death cut the strings that gave me life,
And handed me to Sorrow,
The only kind of middle wife
My folks could beg or borrow. ”

“ WHATEVER I have loved has wounded me;
I bear unto my grave this crimson scar,
The vivid testament of how a star
Can hurt; and I am blinded by the sea.
Hell-deep and heaven-high for Beauty’s sake,
Pierced with the shaft that rankles ere it kills,
I danced with dawn and dusk upon their hills,
Yet thought at each earth kiss my heart would break. ”

“ This half a loaf from sumptuous crumbs your shy
Reneging hand lets fall shall make me blest.
The sturdy homage of a love that throws
Its strength about you, dawn and dusk, at bed
And board, is not for scorn. ”

“ Oh, wear my heart today; tomorrow
Who knows where the winds will blow it?
[80] Advice to Youth (For Guillaume)
SINCE little time is granted here
For pride in pain or play,
Since blood soon cools before that Fear
That makes our prowess clay,
If lips to kiss are freely met,
Lad, be not proud nor shy;
There are no lips where men forget,
And undesiring lie. ”

“ Drained bitter by the sky,
And all the honeyed lies they tell
Come there to thirst and die.
No lie is strong enough to kill
The roots that work below;
From your rich dust and slaughtered will
A tree with tongues will grow. ”

“ LOVE is not love demanding all, itself
Withholding aught; love’s is the nobler way
Of courtesy, that will not feast aware
That the beloved hungers, nor drink unless
The cup be shared down to the last sweet dregs.
Renunciatory never was the thorn
To crown love with, but prodigal and proud!
Too proud to rest the debtor of the one
Dear passion most it dotes upon, always
Love rehabilitates unto the end. ”

“ And still I writhed and moaned, “The curse, the curse,
Than animated death, can death be worse?”
“Dark child of sorrow, mine no less, what art
Of mine can make thee see and play thy part?
The key to all strange things is in thy heart.” ”

“ Of some barbaric dance
Wherein the soul of Africa
Is winged with arrogance.
And yet so light she steps across
The ways her sure feet pass,
She does not dent the smoothest moss
Or bend the thinnest grass. ”

“ We shall not always plant while others reap
The golden increment of bursting fruit,
Nor always countenance, abject and mute,
That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;
Not everlastingly while others sleep
Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,
Not always bend to some more subtle brute;
We were not made eternally to weep.
The night whose sable breast relieves the stark,
White stars is no less lovely being dark,
And there are buds that cannot bloom at all
In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall.
So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,
And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds. ”

“ With poppy for my everlasting flower;
I long not now for that dim cubicle
Of earth to which my lease will not expire,
Where he who comes a tenant there may dwell
Without a thought of famine, flood, or fire. ”

“ Sap road of a maple tree, whose leaves
Grow music as they grow, since your
Wild voice is in them, a harp that grieves
For life that opens death’s dark door.
Though dust, your fingers still can push
The Vision Splendid to a birth,
Though now they work as grass in the hush
Of the night on the broad sweet page of the earth. ”

“ High as the star of that last poignant cry
Death could not stifle in the wasted frame,
You know at length the bright immortal lie
Time gives to those detractors of your name,
And see, from where you and Diana ride,
Your humble epitaph—how misapplied! ”

“ To save the creature man."
"And men to come will curse your name,
And hold you up to scorn;
In all the world will be no shame
Like yours; this is love's thorn.
It takes strong will of heart and soul,
But man is under ban. ”

“ No sky that ever arched its head
Above a wonder-stricken two
Aghast at love, wore such a hue.
Only the Hand that never erred
Bent on beauty, creation-spurred,
Could mix and mingle such a dye,
Nor leave its like in earth or sky. ”

“ Wisdom Cometh With
the Years
NOW I am young and credulous,
My heart is quick to bleed
At courage in the tremulous
Slow sprouting of a seed.
Now I am young and sensitive,
Man's lack can stab me through ”

“ Now their concern is dead.
But where shall I bury sun and rain,
How mortalise the stars,
How still the half-heard cries of pain
That seared her soul with scars?
In what sea depths shall all the seeds
Of every flower die? ”

“ In opulence its frugal meed of friends.
Let neither lose his faith, lest by such loss
Each find insufferable his daily cross.
And be not less immovable to me,
Not less love-leal and staunch, than my heart is. ”

“ That grief is harder on than time on stone,
Though three sides crumble, one will stand apart,
Where thought may mourn its past, remembrance groan,
And hands now bare that once were rich with rings
Rebuild upon the ancient site of things. ”

“ And limbs like apple boughs that sway
When the gusty rain winds beat?
And how would I thrive in a perfect place
Where dancing would be sin,
With not a man to love my face,
Nor an arm to hold me in?
The seraphs and the cherubim
Would be too proud to bend
To sing the faery tunes that brim
My heart from end to end. ”

“ And love me while you can;
And when you will, and can be bettered,
Go to the better man.
“For you’ll grow weary, maybe, sleeping
So long a time with me;
Like this there’ll be no cause for weeping;
The wind is always free. ”

“ More free than all your flags unfurled,
I give my body to be burned.
I mount my cross because I will,
I drink the hemlock which you give
For wine which you withhold—and still,
Because I will not die, I live. ”

“ My hands are slack; my blood is cold;
I marvel that my heart still beats.
I have no will to weep or sing,
No least desire to pray or curse;
The loss of love is a terrible thing;
They lie who say that death is worse. ”

“ Must face the Thing
We cannot fly.
Yea, though we fling
Our notes to the sun,
Time will outsing
Us every one.
All things must change
As the wind is blown;
Time will estrange
The flesh from the bone. ”

“ That hides the better selves of men.
And as my day throbs into dusk,
This heart the world has made to bleed,
While all its red stream deathward flows,
Shall comprehend just why the seed
Must agonize to be the rose. ”

“ My heart was still a pool of bitterness,
Would yield nought else, nought else confess.
I spoke (although no form was there
To see, I knew an ear was there to hear) ,
“Well, let them fight; they can whose flesh is fair.” ”

“ With Age, man’s foe, Earth ever is in league.
Time resurrects her even while he crowds
Your bloom to dust, and lengthens out your shrouds
A day’s length or a year’s; she will be young,
When your last cracked and quivering note is sung. ”

“ Have washed, whose bare brown thighs have held the sun
Incarcerate until his course was run,
I who considered man a high-perfected
Glass where loveliness could lie reflected,
Now that I sway athwart Truth's deep abyss,
Denuding man for what he was and is,
Shall breath and being so inveigle me
That I can damn my dreams to hell, and be
Content, each new-born day, anew to see
The steaming crimson vintage of my youth
Incarnadine the altar-slab of Truth? ”

“ To symbols strange to us
May reckon clearer of His love
Than we who own His cross.
The world’s a curious riddle thrown
Water-wise from heaven’s cup;
The souls we think are hurtling down
Perhaps are climbing up. ”

“ To do a naked tribal dance
Each time he hears the rain?
Why should she think it devil's art
That all my songs should be
Of love and lovers, broken heart,
And wild sweet agony?
Who plants a seed begets a bud,
Extract of that same root ”

“ If love be staunch, call mountains brittle;
Love is a thing will live
So long, my dear,—oh, just the little
While water stays in a sieve.
Yea, love is deathless as the day
Whose death the stars reveal ”

“ But four strong seasons wrangle on this lover’s face.
Of all men born he deems himself so much accurst,
His plight so piteous, his proper pain so rare,
The very bread he eats so dry, so fierce his thirst,
What shall we liken such a martyr to? ”

“ And see no better way,
Bless these who turn the other cheek
For love of you, and pray.
Our Father, God, our Brother, Christ—
So are we taught to pray;
Their kinship seems a little thing
Who sorrow all the day. ”

“ And part, and bliss repeat again. And men
Will pilgrimage from far and wide to see
This tree for which we two were crucified,
And, happy in themselves, will never know
’Twas break of heart that made the Love Tree grow. ”

“ BORN of the sorrowful of heart,
Mirth was a crown upon his head;
Pride kept his twisted lips apart
In jest, to hide a heart that bled.
[71] For Joseph Conrad
NOT of the dust, but of the wave
His final couch should be;
They lie not easy in a grave
Who once have known the sea.
How shall earth’s meagre bed enthrall
The hardiest seaman of them all?
[72] For Myself
WHAT’S in this grave is worth your tear ”

“ Although
Unremembered now.
Trees so soon forget
Little leaves they had
Before,
Knowing spring will let
Them wake, vernal clad
With more;
Trees so soon forget.
Man dreams that he
Is more than a leaf on a tree. ”

“ Soul:THERE is no stronger thing than song;
In sun and rain and leafy trees
Soul:It wafts the timid soul along
Soul:On crested waves of melodies.
Body:But leaves the body bare to feed
Body:Its hunger with its very need. ”

“ And you were born a jade,
It’s just the way things come to pass,
And men and mice are made.
I tell you love is like the dew
That trembles on the grass;
You’d not believe me, speaking true,
That love is wormwood, lass. ”

“ Who gave young Christ heart, soul, and limb,
And all the love he had.
[95] The Wise (For Alain Locke)
DEAD men are wisest, for they know
How far the roots of flowers go,
How long a seed must rot to grow.
Dead men alone bear frost and rain
On throbless heart and heatless brain,
And feel no stir of joy or pain.
Dead men alone are satiate ”

“ Colored Blues Singer
Some weep to find the Golden Pear
Feeds maggots at the core,
And some grow cold as ice, and bear
Them prouder than before.
But you go singing like the sea
Whose lover turns to land ”

“ Now love is dead
We might be friends;
’Tis best instead
To say all ends,
And when we meet
Pass quickly by;
Oh, speed your feet,
And so will I.
I know a man
Thought a spark was dead
That flamed and ran
A brighter red,
And burned the roof
Above his head. ”

“ Troublous Whence and Whither,
Why men strive and sweat, and care for
Bays that droop and wither.
All the stars she knows by name,
End and origin thereof,
Knows if love be kin to shame,
If shame be less than love. ”