The Tropics in New York
Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root, Cocoa in pods and alligator pears, And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit, Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs, Set in the window, bringing memories...
View ArticleThe City’s Love
For one brief golden moment rare like wine, The gracious city swept across the line; Oblivious of the color of my skin, Forgetting that I was an alien guest, She bent to me, my hostile heart to win,...
View ArticleThe White City
I will not toy with it nor bend an inch. Deep in the secret chambers of my heart I muse my life-long hate, and without flinch I bear it nobly as I live my part. My being would be a skeleton, a shell,...
View ArticleEnslaved
Oh when I think of my long-suffering race, For weary centuries despised, oppressed, Enslaved and lynched, denied a human place In the great life line of the Christian West; And in the Black Land...
View ArticleBaptism
Into the furnace let me go alone; Stay you without in terror of the heat. I will go naked in–for thus ’tis sweet— Into the weird depths of the hottest zone. I will not quiver in the frailest bone, You...
View ArticleWhen Dawn Comes to the City
The tired cars go grumbling by, The moaning, groaning cars, And the old milk carts go rumbling by Under the same dull stars. Out of the tenements, cold as stone, Dark figures start for work; I watch...
View ArticleTormented
I will not reason, wrestle here with you, Though you pursue and worry me about; As well put forth my swarthy arm to stop The wild wind howling, darkly mad without. The night is yours for revels; day...
View ArticleFutility
Oh, I have tried to laugh the pain away, Let new flames brush my love-springs like a feather. But the old fever seizes me to-day, As sickness grips a soul in wretched weather. I have given up myself to...
View ArticleOne Year After
I Not once in all our days of poignant love, Did I a single instant give to thee My undivided being wholly free. Not all thy potent passion could remove The barrier that loomed between to prove The...
View ArticleI Know My Soul
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...
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