TO O.A.E.
by: Claude McKay (1890-1948)
- OUR voice
is the color of a robin's breast,
And there's a sweet sob in it like rain -- still rain in the
night.
Among the leaves of the trumpet-tree, close to his nest,
The pea-dove sings, and each note thrills me with strange delight
Like the words, wet with music, that well from your trembling
throat.
I'm afraid of your eyes, they're so bold,
Searching me through, reading my thoughts, shining like gold.
But sometimes they are gentle and soft like the dew on the lips
of the eucharis
Before the sun comes warm with his lover's kiss,
You are sea-foam, pure with the star's loveliness,
Not mortal, a flower, a fairy, too fair for the beautyshorn earth,
All wonderful things, all beautiful things, gave of their wealth
to your birth:
O I love you so much, not reeking of passion, that I feel it
is wrong,
But men will love you, flower, fairy, non-mortal spirit burdened
with flesh,
Forever, life-long.
"To O.A.E." is reprinted
from The Book of American Negro Poetry. Ed. James Weldon
Johnson. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922. |
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POEMS BY CLAUDE MCKAY |
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