COUNTEE CULLEN
Reading edition
Born in New York City, May 30, 1903, and reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage, Countee Cullen’s chief problem has been that of reconciling a Christian upbringing with a pagan inclination. His life so far has not convinced him that the problem is insoluble. Educated in the elementary and high schools of New York City, with an A.B. degree and a Phi Beta Kappa Key from New York University, an M.A. from Harvard, arrantly opposed to any form of enforced racial segregation, he finds it a matter of growing regret that no part of his academic education has been drawn from a racial school. As a poet he is a rank conservative, loving the measured line and the skillful rhyme; but not blind to the virtues of those poets who will not be circumscribed; and he is thankful indeed for the knowledge that should he ever desire to go adventuring, the world is rife with paths to choose from. He has said, perhaps with a reiteration sickening to some of his friends, that he wishes any merit that may be in his work to flow from it solely as the expression of a poet—with no racial consideration to bolster it up. He is still of the same thought. At present he is employed as Assistant Editor of Opportunity, A Journal of Negro Life.
His published works are Color, The Ballad of the Brown Girl, and Copper Sun.
LINES TO OUR ELDERS
You too listless to examine If in pestilence or famine Death lurk least, a hungry gamin Gnawing on you like a beaver On a root, while you trifle Time away nodding in the sun, Careless how the shadows crawl Surely up your crumbling wall, Heedless of the Thief’s footfall, Death’s, whose nimble fingers rifle Your heartbeats one by weary one,— Here’s the difference in our dying: You go dawdling, we go flying. Here’s a thought flung out to plague you: Ours the pleasure if we’d liever Burn completely with the fever Than go ambling with the ague.
I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH LIFE
(With apologies to the memory of Alan Seeger)
I have a rendezvous with Life In days I hope will come Ere youth has sped and strength of mind, Ere voices sweet grown dumb; I have a rendezvous with Life When Spring’s first heralds hum. It may be I shall greet her soon, Shall riot at her behest; It may be I shall seek in vain The peace of her downy breast; Yet I would keep this rendezvous, And deem all hardships sweet, If at the end of the long white way, There Life and I shall meet. Sure some will cry it better far To crown their days in sleep, Than face the wind, the road, and rain, To heed the falling deep; Though wet, nor blow, nor space I fear, Yet fear I deeply, too, Lest Death shall greet and claim me ere I keep Life’s rendezvous.
PROTEST
I long not now, a little while at least, For that serene interminable hour When I shall leave this barmecidal feast, 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. Surely that house has quiet to bestow: Still tongue, spent pulse, heart pumped of its last throb, The fingers tense and tranquil in a row, The throat unwelled with any sigh or sob. But time to live, to love, bear pain and smile, Oh, we are given such a little while!
YET DO I MARVEL
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind, And did he stoop to quibble could tell why The little buried mole continues blind, Why flesh that mirrors him must some day die, Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus Is baited with the fickle fruit, declare If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus To struggle up a never-ending stair. Inscrutable His ways are and immune To catechism by a mind too strewn With petty cares to slightly understand What awful brain compels His awful hand; Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
TO LOVERS OF EARTH: FAIR WARNING
Give over to high things the fervent thought You waste on Earth; let down the righteous bar Against a wayward peace too dearly bought Upon this pale and passion-frozen star. Sweethearts and friends, are they not loyal? Far More fickle, false, perverse, far more unkind, Is Earth to those who give her heart and mind. And you whose lusty youth her snares intrigue, Who glory in her seas, swear by her clouds, 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. She will remain the Earth, sufficient still Though you are gone, and with you that rare loss That vanishes with your bewildered will; And there shall flame no red, indignant cross For you, no quick white scar of wrath emboss The sky, no blood drip from a wounded moon, And not a single star chime out of tune.
FROM THE DARK TOWER
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.
TO JOHN KEATS, POET, AT SPRINGTIME
I cannot hold my peace, John Keats; There never was a spring like this; It is an echo, that repeats My last year’s song and next year’s bliss. I know, in spite of all men say Of Beauty, you have felt her most. Yea, even in your grave her way Is laid. Poor, troubled, lyric ghost, Spring never was so fair and dear As Beauty makes her seem this year. I cannot hold my peace, John Keats; I am as helpless in the toil Of Spring as any lamb that bleats To feel the solid earth recoil Beneath his puny legs. Spring beats Her tocsin call to those who love her, And lo! the dogwood petals cover Her breast with drifts of snow, and sleek White gulls fly screaming to her, and hover About her shoulders, and kiss her cheek, While white and purple lilacs muster A strength that bears them to a cluster Of color and odor; for her sake All things that slept are now awake. And you and I, shall we lie still, John Keats, while Beauty summons us? Somehow I feel your sensitive will Is pulsing up some tremulous 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. “John Keats is dead,” they say, but I Who hear your full insistent cry In bud and blossom, leaf and tree, Know John Keats still writes poetry. And while my head is earthward bowed To read new life sprung from your shroud, Folks seeing me must think it strange That merely spring should so derange My mind. They do not know that you, John Keats, keep revel with me, too.
FOUR EPITAPHS
1
For My Grandmother
This lovely flower fell to seed; Work gently sun and rain; She held it as her dying creed That she would grow again.
2
For John Keats, Apostle of Beauty
Not writ in water nor in mist, Sweet lyric throat, thy name. Thy singing lips that cold death kissed Have seared his own with flame.
3
For Paul Laurence Dunbar
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.
4
For a Lady I Know
She even thinks that up in heaven Her class lies late and snores, While poor black cherubs rise at seven To do celestial chores.
INCIDENT
Once riding in old Baltimore, Heart-filled, head-filled with glee, I saw a Baltimorean Keep looking straight at me. Now I was eight and very small, And he was no whit bigger, And so I smiled, but he poked out His tongue and called me, “Nigger.” I saw the whole of Baltimore From May until December: Of all the things that happened there That’s all that I remember.