Claude McKay’s speaker is haunted by a tender memory: as a barefoot child he knelt beside his mother while she sang to him. Now, years after her death, that remembered voice returns at night and almost breaks through his emotional numbness. He describes tears rising from his heart and reaching his throat, but they refuse to fall. The image is powerful because it turns grief into something blocked, physical, and painful rather than a release. Ten years have passed since his mother died, and he calls them “ten dark years of pain,” yet what he longs for most is not to forget but simply to cry again. The mood is quiet and sorrowful, less about the immediate shock of loss than about the exhaustion of carrying sorrow for so long that even weeping feels impossible.
December, 1919 — Summary
Last night I heard your voice, mother, The words you sang to me When I, a little barefoot boy, Knelt down against your knee. And tears gushed from my heart, mother, And passed beyond its wall, But though the fountain reached my throat The drops refused to fall. ’Tis ten years since you died, mother, Just ten dark years of pain, And oh, I only wish that I Could weep just once again.