Copper Sun

COLOR

From the Dark Tower

( To Charles S. Johnson )

We shall not always plant while others reap

The golden increment of bursting fruit,

Not 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.

Threnody for a Brown Girl

Weep not, you who love her;

What rebellious flow

Grief undams shall recover

Whom the gods bid go?

Sorrow rising like a wall,

Bitter, blasphemous,

What avails it to recall

Beauty back to us?

Think not this grave shall keep her,

This marriage-bed confine;

Death may dig it deep and deeper;

She shall climb it like a vine.

Body that was quick and sentient,

Dear as thought or speech,

Death could not with one trenchant

Blow snatch out of reach.

She is nearer than the word

Wasted on her now,

Nearer than the swaying bird

On its rhythmic bough.

Only were our faith as much

As a mustard seed,

Aching, hungry hands might touch

Her as they touch a reed.

Life who was not loth to trade her

Unto death, has done

Better than he planned, has made her

Wise as Solomon.

Now she knows the Why and Wherefore,

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.

What was crooked now is straight,

What was rough is plain;

Grief and sorrow have no weight

Now to cause her pain.

Plain to her why fevered blisters

Made her dark hands run,

While her favored, fairer sisters

Neither wrought nor spun;

Clear to her the hidden reason

Men daily fret and toil,

Staving death off for a season

Till soil return to soil.

One to her are flame and frost;

Silence is her singing lark;

We alone are children, lost,

Crying in the dark.

Varied feature now, and form,

Change has bred upon her;

Crush no bug nor nauseous worm

Lest you tread upon her.

Pluck no flower lest she scream;

Bruise no slender reed,

Lest it prove more than it seem,

Lest she groan and bleed.

More than ever trust your brother,

Read him golden, pure;

It may be she finds no other

House so safe and sure.

Set no poet carving

Rhymes to make her laugh;

Only live hearts starving

Need an epitaph.

Lay upon her no white stone

From a foreign quarry;

Earth and sky be these alone

Her obituary.

Swift as startled fawn or swallow,

Silence all her sound,

She has fled; we cannot follow

Further than this mound.

We who take the beaten track

Trying to appease

Hearts near breaking with their lack,

We need elegies.

Confession

If for a day joy masters me,

Think not my wounds are healed;

Far deeper than the scars you see,

I keep the roots concealed.

They shall bear blossoms with the fall;

I have their word for this,

Who tend my roots with rains of gall,

And suns of prejudice.

Uncle Jim

"White folks is white," says uncle Jim;

"A platitude," I sneer;

And then I tell him so is milk,

And the froth upon his beer.

His heart walled up with bitterness,

He smokes his pungent pipe,

And nods at me as if to say,

"Young fool, you'll soon be ripe!"

I have a friend who eats his heart

Away with grief of mine,

Who drinks my joy as tipplers drain

Deep goblets filled with wine.

I wonder why here at his side,

Face-in-the-grass with him,

My mind should stray the Grecian urn

To muse on uncle Jim.

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;

You make your grief a melody

And take it by the hand.

Such songs the mellow-bosomed maids

Of Africa intone

For lovers dead in hidden glades,

Slow rotting flesh and bone.

Such keenings tremble from the kraal,

Where sullen-browed abides

The second wife whose dark tears fail

To draw him to her sides.

Somewhere Jeritza breaks her heart

On symbols Verdi wrote;

You tear the strings of your soul apart,

Blood dripping note by note.

Colors

( To Leland )

(Red)

She went to buy a brand new hat,

And she was ugly, black, and fat:

"This red becomes you well," they said,

And perched it high upon her head.

And then they laughed behind her back

To see it glow against the black.

She paid for it with regal mien,

And walked out proud as any queen.

(Black)

1

The play is done, the crowds depart; and see

That twisted tortured thing hung from a tree,

Swart victim of a newer Calvary.

2

Yea, he who helped Christ up Golgotha's track,

That Simon who did not deny, was black.

(The Unknown Color)

I've often heard my mother say,

When great winds blew across the day,

And, cuddled close and out of sight,

The young pigs squealed with sudden fright

Like something speared or javelined,

"Poor little pigs, they see the wind."

The Litany of the Dark People

Our flesh that was a battle-ground

Shows now the morning-break;

The ancient deities are downed

For Thy eternal sake.

Now that the past is left behind,

Fling wide Thy garment's hem

To keep us one with Thee in mind,

Thou Christ of Bethlehem.

The thorny wreath may ridge our brow,

The spear may mar our side,

And on white wood from a scented bough

We may be crucified;

Yet no assault the old gods make

Upon our agony

Shall swerve our footsteps from the wake

Of Thine toward Calvary.

And if we hunger now and thirst,

Grant our withholders may,

When heaven's constellations burst

Upon Thy crowning day,

Be fed by us, and given to see

Thy mercy in our eyes,

When Bethlehem and Calvary

Are merged in Paradise.