My little love, my darling,
You were a doorway to me;
You let me out of the confines
Into this strange countrie,
Where people are crowded like thistles,
Yet are shapely and comely to see.
My little love, my dearest
Twice have you issued me,
Once from your womb, sweet mother,
Once from myself, to be
Free of all hearts, my darling,
Of each heart's home-life free.
And so, my love, my mother,
I shall always be true to you;
Twice I am born, my dearest,
To life, and to death, in you;
With two white roses on her breasts,
White candles at head and feet,
Dark Madonna of the grave she rests;
Lord Death has found her sweet.
Her mother pawned her wedding ring
To lay her out in white;
She’d be so proud she’d dance and sing
To see herself tonight.
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.
Reg wished me to go with him to the field,
I paused because I did not want to go;
But in her quiet way she made me yield
Reluctantly, for she was breathing low.
Her hand she slowly lifted from her lap
And, smiling sadly in the old sweet way,
She pointed to the nail where hung my cap.
Her eyes said: I shall last another day.
But scarcely had we reached the distant place,
When o’er the hills we heard a faint bell ringing;
A boy came running up with frightened face;
We knew the fatal news that he was bringing.
I heard him listlessly, without a moan,
Although the only one I loved was gone.
The dawn departs, the morning is begun,
The trades come whispering from off the seas,
New neighbors came to the corner house at Congress
and Green streets.
The look of their clean white curtains was the same
as the rim of a nun's bonnet.
One way was an oyster pail factory, one way they
made candy, one way paper boxes, strawboard
cartons.
The warehouse trucks shook the dust of the ways
loose and the wheels whirled dust — there was
dust of hoof and wagon wheel and rubber tire —
dust of police and fire wagons — dust of the winds
that circled at midnights and noon listening to no
prayers.
" O mother, I know the heart of you," I sang passing
the rim of a nun's bonnet — O white curtains — and
people clean as the prayers of Jesus here in the
I who saw ten strong young men die anonymously, I who
saw ten old mothers hand over their sons to the
nation anonymously, I who saw ten thousand touch
the sunlit silver finalities of undistinguished human
glory — why do I sneeze sardonically at a bronze
drinking fountain named after one who participated
in the war vicariously and bought ten farms?
I AM making a Cartoon of a Woman. She is the People.
She is the Great Dirty Mother.
And Many Children hang on her Apron, crawl at her
Feet, snuggle at her Breasts.
Empty it seems, at times, their cry about Love,
Their claim that love is the only thing that survives.
For I who am born of my centuries strewn with hate,
Who was spewed into life from a timeless tangle of sin,
I can hate as strong and as long as I love!
There are hours and issues I hate;
There are creeds and deeds and doubts I hate;
There are men I hate to the uttermost;
And although in their graves they listen and weep,
Earth's mothers and wistful women who cried for peace,
I hate this King of Evil who has crowned my heart with Hate!
Go through the gates with closed eyes.
Stand erect and let your black face front the west.
Drop the axe and leave the timber where it lies;
A woodman on the hill must have his rest.
Go where leaves are lying brown and wet.
Forget her warm arms and her breast who mothered you,
And every face you ever loved forget.
Close your eyes; walk bravely through.
This is what my lover said,
" I kissed your hat because it touched your head,
I kissed your shiny shoes, I'll kiss you all,
I love your house, I'll kiss your wall.
I wish that I could kiss that burning coal
Because it's in your fire, dear Soul! "
My little Son is my fond lover —
It seems no time ago since he was born.
I know he will be quick and happy to discover
The world of other women, and leave me forlorn!
Sometimes I think that I'll be scarcely human
If I can brook his chosen woman!
There is a mirror in my room
Less like a mirror than a tomb,
There are so many ghosts that pass
Across the surface of the glass.
When in the morning I arise
With circles round my tired eyes,
Seeking the glass to brush my hair
My mother's mother meets me there.
If in the middle of the day
I happen to go by that way,
I see a smile I used to know —
My mother, twenty years ago.
But when I rise by candlelight
To feed my baby in the night,
Then whitely in the glass I see
My dead child's face look out at me.
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.
My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And, pointed to the east, began to say:
"Look on the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.
"And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.