Color

Then call me traitor if you must, Shout treason and default! Say I betray a sacred trust Aching beyond this vault. I’ll bear your censure as your praise, For never shall the clan Confine my singing to its ways Beyond the ways of man. No racial option narrows grief, Pain is no patriot, And sorrow plaits her dismal leaf For all as lief as not. With blind sheep groping every hill, Searching an oriflamme, How shall the shepherd heart then thrill To only the darker lamb?

These men were kings, albeit they were black, Christophe and Dessalines and L’Ouverture; Their majesty has made me turn my back Upon a plaint I once shaped to endure. These men were black, I say, but they were crowned And purple-clad, however brief their time. Stifle your agony; let grief be drowned; We know joy had a day once and a clime. Dark gutter-snipe, black sprawler-in-the-mud, A thing men did a man may do again. What answer filters through your sluggish blood To these dark ghosts who knew so bright a reign? “Lo, I am dark, but comely,” Sheba sings. “And we were black,” three shades reply, “but kings.”

Who lies with his milk-white maiden, Bound in the length of her pale gold hair, Cooled by her lips with the cold kiss laden, He lies, but he loves not there. Who lies with his nut-brown maiden, Bruised to the bone by her sin-black hair, Warmed with the wine that her full lips trade in, He lies, and his love lies there.