Countee Cullen’s speaker introduces his father as quiet and steady and his mother as puritan and calm, then undercuts those portraits. Father’s eyes hold a “languid ghost” of some sacred sin; mother, despite her hymns, trembles at a patch of checkered sod. The speaker feels like the natural, visible flowering of those hidden desires. He asks why his parents are surprised or troubled by his “naked tribal dance” in the rain or by songs full of love, broken hearts, and wild agony. The poem’s mood is intimate, wry, and a little defiant: it exposes the quiet hungers beneath respectability and claims them as inheritance rather than shame. The final image of seed, root, and wild fruit insists that passion doesn’t come from nowhere—it is passed down.
Fruit of the Flower — Summary
My father is a quiet man With sober, steady ways; For simile, a folded fan; His nights are like his days.
My mother’s life is puritan, No hint of cavalier, A pool so calm you’re sure it can Have little depth to fear.
And yet my father’s eyes can boast How full his life has been; There haunts them yet the languid ghost Of some still sacred sin.
And though my mother chants of God, And of the mystic river, I’ve seen a bit of checkered sod Set all her flesh aquiver.
Why should he deem it pure mischance A son of his is fain To do a naked tribal dance Each time he hears the rain?
Why should she think it devil’s art That all my songs should be Of love and lovers, broken heart, And wild sweet agony?
Who plants a seed begets a bud, Extract of that same root; Why marvel at the hectic blood That flushes this wild fruit?