Les plus lus ▸
Countee Cullen
Now I am young and credulous,
My heart is quick to bleed
At courage in the tremulous
Slow sprouting of a seed.
Now I am young and sensitive,
Man’s lack can stab me through;
I own no stitch I would not give
To him that asked me to.
Now I am young and a fool for love,
My blood goes mad to see
A brown girl pass me like a dove
That flies melodiously.
Let me be lavish of my tears,
And dream that false is true;
Though wisdom cometh with the years,
The barren days come, too.
seeing people flock in the city
on the leaden street
I wheel above
in all that nothing
clear of sign or chant
but to a child
A great hen, very angry, began
to pull down the dove and the lark,
a pretty dish.
The mouth dropped thirty guns
in a high debate with the sea.
It blew hard. The great fowl’s
mother was put to bed.
My window was infinite as a ring.
My head ached.
Sitting backwards, I heard a dove
speak with the day.
A great burr did vex me in my hose.
A dove came on board whom
I do not know; it came to go.
I wrap myself up in a dry sheet.
Letters came by ox and dove, good as oysters.
After dinner I wrote a great many letters.
After that, I slept, God forgive me!
After that, I walked, talking.
After that I sat.
Day by day
the shadows are dwindling,
assuming more realistic shapes,
like the ambitions of a man
in middle age.
The snow hardens underfoot.
I hear the first
mourning dove call of the year:
desire in a minor key.
When it died, the porcupine
leaked its fluids onto the snow
like a junker car.
I turn it over
with a stick: no sign
of a wound.
Startled up from the forest floor,
sixteen doves go whistling
into the snow squall.
Last night you came
In my dreams.
You were sitting on a chair
And glanced sideways
At me, standing.
You looked young and slightly plumb.
You never were plumb, I thought in my dream,
Amused.
You talked to me; kind words -
And smiled gently, with warmth.
Listening, I wondered happily
How you had changed.
In my dream, I remember
I wished, wistfully
At the images beginning to fade
That it wasn't a dream.
The library’s doors
laid flat for their new fall paint
yellow tape guards maw
Read the Tao Te Ching
and mop up cigarette butts
in time, convergence
Ah, but how much time…
suppose I haven’t the strength
to while away Now
Posthumous toilets
wrenched sweatily curbside
on crooked revue
Dark at 1:20
(pm, that is): Straight into
summer-ending storm
Mecca Cafe fries
Through the cracks in the roof
shafts of sunlight
like arrows piercing my heart.
In the beam, specks of dust turn golden.
I hear the doves' wings flapping
and the cooing of the lovers -
I remember him.
Bats hang motionless, waiting for the night -
how docile they look, like he did,
before he savoured the sweetness of my blood!
The wind has died.
Fallen leaves do not chatter.
The doves have left.
Bats are stirring in their sleep.
Night approaches-
I wait - listening for his footfalls...
When was the last time
My privates pricked, playfully
By the teasing raindrops
Splattered by the wind?
When was the last time
I stood in the rain, nude?
As a child? No, mother would have
Frisked me away and gave
A slap on my bottom too!
Once I stripped on a beach
Blushing at my lesser size
Than that of the tourist by my side.
Played, all dangling,
Jumping and rolling,
Bewildering unfamiliar freedom.
It wasn’t raining then, though.