She even thinks that up in heaven

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.

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 heartAlways with grief of mine,Who drinks my joy as tipplers drainDeep goblets filled with wine.I…

And bit by bit to the smallest partThat organ will be breaking.Never love with all your mind,It only ends in fretting;In musing on sweet joys behind,too poignant for forgetting.Never love with all your soul,for such there is no ending;though a mind that frets may find control,and a shattered heart find mending.Give but a grain of…

That with the cool oblivion of sleepA dawnless Night may soothe the smart of grief.If from the soil our sweat enriches sproutOne meagre blossom for our hands to cull,Accustomed indigence provokes a shoutOf praise that life becomes so bountiful.Now ushered regally into your own,Look where you will, as far as eye can see,Your little seeds…

Dark Madonna of the grave she rests;Lord Death has found her sweet.Her mother pawned her wedding ringTo lay her out in white;She’d be so proud she’d dance and singto see herself tonight.

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…