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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.
who ever had less
than the same innocence
as the wise?
she keeps house
where the day rooms
out in the bare-legged corn
Maja used to say,
“Thank you for today.”
From her I learned
everyone’s old and
young at once.
At night in snow
near Maja’s bus-stop
on Maja’s basic street—
Murargatan means
street of bricks—wild
rabbits sometimes paused
like caesuras in Swedish
conversation. I waited.
I felt wiser after leaving
Maja’s house. Life itself
was a tutorial. I’d gathered
Though leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.
When I have ceased to break my wings
Against the faultiness of things,
And learned that compromises wait
Behind each hardly opened gate,
When I can look Life in the eyes,
Grown calm and very coldly wise,
Life will have given me the Truth,
And taken in exchange--my youth.
Unless I learn to ask no help
From any other soul but mine,
To seek no strength in waving reeds
Nor shade beneath a straggling pine;
Unless I learn to look at Grief
Unshrinking from her tear-blind eyes,
And take from Pleasure fearlessly
Whatever gifts will make me wise--
Unless I learn these things on earth,
Why was I ever given birth?
She must be rich who can forego
An hour so jewelled with delight,
She must have treasuries of joy
That she can draw on day and night,
She must be very sure of heaven--
Or is it only that she feels
How much more safe it is to lack
A thing that time so often steals.
Infinite gentleness, infinite irony
Are in this face with fast-sealed eyes,
And round this mouth that learned in loneliness
How useless their wisdom is to the wise.
In her nun’s habit carved, patiently, lovingly,
By one who knew the ways of womankind,
This woman’s face still keeps, in its cold wistful calm,
All of the subtle pride of her mind.
These long patrician hands, clasping the crucifix,
Show she had weighed the world, her will was set;
These pale curved lips of hers, holding their hidden smile,
Once having made their choice, knew no regret.
She was of those who hoard their own thoughts carefully,
Feeling them far too dear to give away,
Content to look at life with the high, insolent
In youth my wings were strong and tireless,
But I did not know the mountains.
In age I knew the mountains
But my weary wings could not follow my vision—
Genius is wisdom and youth.
My mind was a mirror:
It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew.
In youth my mind was just a mirror
In a rapidly flying car,
Which catches and loses bits of the landscape.
Then in time
Great scratches were made on the mirror,
Letting the outside world come in,
And letting my inner self look out.
For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow,
A birth with gains and losses.
The mind sees the world as a thing apart,
And the soul makes the world at one with itself.
A mirror scratched reflects no image—
And this is the silence of wisdom.
Dead men are wisest, for they know
How far the roots of flowers go,
How long a seed must rot to grow.
Dead men alone bear frost and rain
On throbless heart and heatless brain,
And feel no stir of joy or pain.
Dead men alone are satiate;
They sleep and dream and have no weight,
To curb their rest, of love or hate.
Strange, men should flee their company,
Or think me strange who long to be
Wrapped in their cool immunity.
Speak, sir, and be wise.
Speak choosing your words, sir,
like an old woman over a bushel
of apples.