HELENE JOHNSON

What do I care for morning, For a shivering aspen tree, For sun flowers and sumac Opening greedily? What do I care for morning, For the glare of the rising sun, For a sparrow’s noisy prating, For another day begun? Give me the beauty of evening, The cool consummation of night, And the moon like a love-sick lady, Listless and wan and white. Give me a little valley Huddled beside a hill, Like a monk in a monastery, Safe and contented and still, Give me the white road glistening, A strand of the pale moon’s hair, And the tall hemlocks towering Dark as the moon is fair. Oh what do I care for morning, Naked and newly born— Night is here, yielding and tender— What do I care for dawn!

You are disdainful and magnificent— Your perfect body and your pompous gait, Your dark eyes flashing solemnly with hate, Small wonder that you are incompetent To imitate those whom you so despise— Your shoulders towering high above the throng, Your head thrown back in rich, barbaric song, Palm trees and mangoes stretched before your eyes. Let others toil and sweat for labor’s sake And wring from grasping hands their meed of gold. Why urge ahead your supercilious feet? Scorn will efface each footprint that you make. I love your laughter arrogant and bold. You are too splendid for this city street!

Summer matures. Brilliant Scorpion Appears. The Pelican’s thick pouch Hangs heavily with perch and slugs. The brilliant-bellied newt flashes Its crimson crest in the white water. In the lush meadow, by the river, The yellow-freckled toad laughs With a toothless gurgle at the white-necked stork Standing asleep on one red reedy leg. And here Pan dreams of slim stalks clean for piping, And of a nightingale gone mad with freedom. Come. I shall weave a bed of reeds And willow limbs and pale nightflowers. I shall strip the roses of their petals, And the white down from the swan’s neck. Come. Night is here. The air is drunk With wild grape and sweet clover. And by the sacred fount of Aganippe Euterpe sings of love. Ah, the woodland creatures, The doves in pairs, the wild sow and her shoats, The stag searching the forest for a mate, Know more of love than you, my callous Phaon. The young moon is a curved white scimitar Pierced thru the swooning night. Sweet Phaon. With Sappho sleep like the stars at dawn. This night was born for love, my Phaon. Come.

Little brown boy, Slim, dark, big-eyed, Crooning love songs to your banjo Down at the Lafayette— Gee, boy, I love the way you hold your head, High sort of and a bit to one side, Like a prince, a jazz prince. And I love Your eyes flashing, and your hands, And your patent-leathered feet, And your shoulders jerking the jig-wa. And I love your teeth flashing, And the way your hair shines in the spotlight Like it was the real stuff. Gee, brown boy, I loves you all over. I’m glad I’m a jig. I’m glad I can Understand your dancin’ and your Singin’, and feel all the happiness And joy and don’t care in you. Gee, boy, when you sing, I can close my ears And hear tom toms just as plain. Listen to me, will you, what do I know About tom toms? But I like the word, sort of, Don’t you? It belongs to us. Gee, boy, I love the way you hold your head, And the way you sing, and dance, And everything. Say, I think you’re wonderful. You’re Allright with me, You are.

To climb a hill that hungers for the sky, To dig my hands wrist deep in pregnant earth, To watch a young bird, veering, learn to fly, To give a still, stark poem shining birth. To hear the rain drool, dimpling, down the drain And splash with a wet giggle in the street, To ramble in the twilight after supper, And to count the pretty faces that you meet. To ride to town on trolleys, crowded, teeming With joy and hurry and laughter and push and sweat— Squeezed next a patent-leathered Negro dreaming Of a wrinkled river and a minnow net. To buy a paper from a breathless boy, And read of kings and queens in foreign lands, Hyperbole of romance and adventure, All for a penny the color of my hand. To lean against a strong tree’s bosom, sentient And hushed before the silent prayer it breathes, To melt the still snow with my seething body And kiss the warm earth tremulous underneath. Ah, life, to let your stabbing beauty pierce me And wound me like we did the studded Christ, To grapple with you, loving you too fiercely, And to die bleeding—consummate with Life.

Ah, little road all whirry in the breeze, A leaping clay hill lost among the trees, The bleeding note of rapture streaming thrush Caught in a drowsy hush And stretched out in a single singing line of dusky song. Ah little road, brown as my race is brown, Your trodden beauty like our trodden pride, Dust of the dust, they must not bruise you down. Rise to one brimming golden, spilling cry!

Upstairs on the third floor Of the 135th Street library In Harlem, I saw a little Bottle of sand, brown sand Just like the kids make pies Out of down at the beach. But the label said: “This Sand was taken from the Sahara desert.” Imagine that! The Sahara desert! Some bozo’s been all the way to Africa to get some sand. And yesterday on Seventh Avenue I saw a darky dressed fit to kill In yellow gloves and swallow tail coat And swirling a cane. And everyone Was laughing at him. Me too, At first, till I saw his face When he stopped to hear a Organ grinder grind out some jazz. Boy! You should a seen that darky’s face! It just shone. Gee, he was happy! And he began to dance. No Charleston or Black Bottom for him. No sir. He danced just as dignified And slow. No, not slow either. Dignified and proud! You couldn’t Call it slow, not with all the Cuttin’ up he did. You would a died to see him. The crowd kept yellin’ but he didn’t hear, Just kept on dancin’ and twirlin’ that cane And yellin’ out loud every once in a while. I know the crowd thought he was coo-coo. But say, I was where I could see his face, And somehow, I could see him dancin’ in a jungle, A real honest-to-cripe jungle, and he wouldn’t have on them Trick clothes—those yaller shoes and yaller gloves And swallow-tail coat. He wouldn’t have on nothing. And he wouldn’t be carrying no cane. He’d be carrying a spear with a sharp fine point Like the bayonets we had “over there.” And the end of it would be dipped in some kind of Hoo-doo poison. And he’d be dancin’ black and naked and gleaming. And he’d have rings in his ears and on his nose And bracelets and necklaces of elephants’ teeth. Gee, I bet he’d be beautiful then all right. No one would laugh at him then, I bet. Say! That man that took that sand from the Sahara desert And put it in a little bottle on a shelf in the library, That’s what they done to this shine, ain’t it? Bottled him. Trick shoes, trick coat, trick cane, trick everything—all glass— But inside— Gee, that poor shine!

Summer comes. The ziczac hovers ’Round the greedy-mouthed crocodile. A vulture bears away a foolish jackal. The flamingo is a dash of pink Against dark green mangroves, Her slender legs rivalling her slim neck. The laughing lake gurgles delicious music in its throat And lulls to sleep the lazy lizard, A nebulous being on a sun-scorched rock. In such a place, In this pulsing, riotous gasp of color, I met Magalu, dark as a tree at night, Eager-lipped, listening to a man with a white collar And a small black book with a cross on it. Oh Magalu, come! Take my hand and I will read you poetry, Chromatic words, Seraphic symphonies, Fill up your throat with laughter and your heart with song. Do not let him lure you from your laughing waters, Lulling lakes, lissome winds. Would you sell the colors of your sunset and the fragrance Of your flowers, and the passionate wonder of your forest For a creed that will not let you dance?