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;
They sleep and dream and have no weight,
To curb their rest, of love or hate.
Strange, men should flee their company,
Or think me strange who long to be
Wrapped in their cool immunity.
Similar Posts
All through an empty place I go,
The candles and the lamps I lightGo down before a wind of gloom.Thick-spraddled lies the dust about,A fit, sad place to write her nameOr draw her face the way she lookedThat legendary night she came.The old house crumbles bit by bit;Each day I hear the ominous thudThat says another rent is thereFor winds to pierce…
That bright chimeric beast
Save in the poet’s breast,The white-flanked unicorn,Never may be shakenFrom his solitude;Never may be takenIn any earthly wood.That bird forever feathered,Of its new self the sire,After aeons weathered,Reincarnate by fire,Falcon may not nor eagleSwerve from his eyrie,Nor any crumb inveigleDown to an earthly tree.That fish of the dread regimeInvented to becomeThe fable and the dreamOf…
Some are teethed on a silver spoon,
I cut my teeth as the black racoon–For implements of battle.Some are swaddled in silk and down,And heralded by a star;They swathed my limbs in a sackcloth gownOn a night that was black as tar.For some, godfather and goddameThe opulent fairies be;Dame Poverty gave me my name,And Pain godfathered me.For I was born on Saturday–‘Bad…
He never spoke a word to me,
He never gave a sign to me,And yet I knew and came.At first I said, ‘I will not bearHis cross upon my back;He only seeks to place it thereBecause my skin is black.’But He was dying for a dream,And He was very meek,And in His eyes there shone a gleamMen journey far to seek.It was…
Once riding in old Baltimore,
I saw a BaltimoreanKeep looking straight at me.Now I was eight and very small,And he was no whit bigger,And so I smiled, but he poked outHis tongue, and called me, ‘Nigger.’I saw the whole of BaltimoreFrom May until December;Of all the things that happened thereThat’s all that I remember.
We shall not always plant while others reap
Not always countenance, abject and mute,That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;Not everlastingly while others sleepShall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,Not always bend to some more subtle brute;We were not made to eternally weep.The night whose sable breast relieves the stark,White stars is no less lovely being dark,And there are buds that…