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Countee Cullen
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold;
Where long will cling the lips of the moth,
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;
I hide no hate; I am not even wroth
Who found earth’s breath so keen and cold;
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold.
high and strange we eat
the most perplexed sugars
such as white light or road provisions
a new version of coffee
or this gold edge of the ice
where others suffer
the world is too little for us
for our merchants and tenants
our lands and all our loves
wrapped up in paper
I would not open it to see
what gold could do
a loss I could hardly bear
but for infinite comfort
I had at sea
an abundance of sea,
spice and gold
in lieu of god,
the absence of time.
At home, I sleep,
the wench mending my breeches
by my bed.
In the glass city there are
no glass windows,
the king is kin to his own nothing
and the queen is a whole table:
so the difference between
gold and evening.
We make ourselves
impossible to express
in clothes, like
streets with carpets
of gold and silver,
our eyes at last
overcome with what
we have seen,
going home drunk
in the evening suit,
rich with embroidery.
White winter: a mine of nothing,
a great iron book.
I dine alone with the lord of paint
and send to Africa for gold ore.
I do not find my fair
late wife.
With the dog to see some poor children
in tawny clothes sing.
I give them five pieces in gold,
a sound lesson upon the flag
and a silver can of ham three stories high.
Abroad on a cold business, I have a secret fire: a piece of gold.
Infinite, tedious rain.
sober graves grow up
into desires
to look still
to leave a great family
among the wrong names
the riven street is rich
in other men’s gold
I am he who had
been hunting and
is come back dead
to all I own,
to my house made
of children and gold,
to my picture
which is now
done with me.
rubbing my belly I grow
old and ugly
all winter I am broke
and in summer like a child
I dig for gold
the earth going to pieces
in my pocket