A robe arrives from an emperor, and the speaker responds not with awe but with a cool, almost startling calm: it is only cloth, and cloth will rot. Lewis Alexander, a poet and playwright born at the turn of the twentieth century, folded that recognition into three lines. He belonged to the Harlem Renaissance, and “Japanese Hokku 6” comes from a sequence that borrowed the spare Japanese form at a moment when Black writers were broadening American poetry by reaching beyond European models. The poem’s quiet meditation on transience, however, is not a stylistic exercise; it is a sharp statement about value and impermanence.
The speaker begins by deflating the object before it can become a symbol of pride: “This is but my robe.” The word “but” matters. It sets the robe aside as something separate from the self, almost an inconvenience to explain. Then the second line complicates the picture: “His Majesty gave to me.” Now the garment carries the weight of royal favor, perhaps the kind of honor that might define a courtier’s public life. A less clear-eyed speaker might stop there, wrapped in borrowed importance. But Alexander adds a third line that gently erases the distinction: “Garments will decay.” The shift from the singular robe to the plural “garments” widens the statement. The emperor’s gift is no more permanent than a beggar’s coat. The central idea, then, is a deliberate humbling of material glory. Whatever the robe represents—status, loyalty, protection, or even the body itself—it belongs to the world of things that wear out.
The form mirrors the message. Alexander uses three unrhymed lines that approximate the five-seven-five syllable count of a classical hokku; the first and last lines are five syllables, and the middle line moves close to seven. There is no rhyme to create comfort or closure, only the blunt finality of “decay.” Each line is a complete statement, so the reader pauses after each small revelation. The poem’s imagery is almost entirely visual and tactile: a robe, the act of giving, the slow ruin of fabric. Alexander plants the ornate word “Majesty” amid plain English—“this,” “but,” “my,” “gave,” “will”—so the title-like grandeur is isolated and then dismantled. The verb “gave” is the only active human gesture, while “decay” is an ongoing natural process that needs no human hand. That contrast between a single act of generosity and the long, impersonal work of time gives the poem its tension.
What makes the poem significant is its cultural blend. During the Harlem Renaissance, African American poets were exploring new ways to express modern Black identity; Alexander turned to a Japanese form and found a language concise enough for universal truths. The poem also echoes Buddhist and Japanese ideas of impermanence, yet it grounds them in a human relationship with a “Majesty.” That makes the poem feel both distant and immediate. It does not moralize. It presents a robe, a giver, and a future of decay, then leaves the reader to ask what remains once the silk has rotted. The dignity in the speaker’s voice is the answer: the self that observes, the voice that refuses to confuse itself with cloth, is what endures. That is why a poem this short can feel so spacious.