Category: Claude McKay

I Could Not Sleep

Claude McKay (1889 – 1948)

“Nations, like plants and human beings, grow. And if the development is thwarted they are dwarfed and overshadowed.”

Claude McKay

All Yesterday It Poured

by Claude McKay

All yesterday it poured, and all night long
I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat
Upon the shingled roof like a weird song,
Upon the grass like running children’s feet.
And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed,
Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,
Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist,
And nestled soft against the earth’s wet breast.
But lo, there was a miracle at dawn!
The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze,
The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn,
The songsters twittered in the rustling trees.
And all things were transfigured in the day,
But me whom radiant beauty could not move;
For you, more wonderful, were far away,
And I was blind with hunger for your love.

Used

by Rita Dove

The conspiracy’s to make us thin. Size threes
are all the rage, and skirts ballooning above twinkling knees
are every man-chld’s preadolescent dream.
Tabla rasa. No slate’s that clean–

we’ve earned the navels sunk in grief
when the last child emptied us of their brief
interior light. Our muscles say We have been used.

Have you ever tried silk sheets? I did,
persuaded by postnatal dread
and a Macy’s clerk to bargain for more zip.
We couldn’t hang on, slipped
to the floor and by morning the quilts
had slid off, too. Enough of guilt–
It’s hard work staying cool.

Blind With Hunger For Your Love

Claude Mckay

Poetry must be simple, sensuous or impassioned.

Emma Lazarus

Summer Morn in New Hampshire

Claude McKay – 1889-1948

All yesterday it poured, and all night long
I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat
Upon the shingled roof like a weird song,
Upon the grass like running children’s feet.
And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed,
Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,
Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist,
And nestled soft against the earth’s wet breast.
But lo, there was a miracle at dawn!
The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze,
The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn,
The songsters twittered in the rustling trees.
And all things were transfigured in the day,
But me whom radiant beauty could not move;
For you, more wonderful, were far away,
And I was blind with hunger for your love.

Long Island Sound

by Emma Lazarus – 1849-1887

I see it as it looked one afternoon
In August,—by a fresh soft breeze o’erblown.
The swiftness of the tide, the light thereon,
A far-off sail, white as a crescent moon.
The shining waters with pale currents strewn,
The quiet fishing-smacks, the Eastern cove,
The semi-circle of its dark, green grove.
The luminous grasses, and the merry sun
In the grave sky; the sparkle far and wide,
Laughter of unseen children, cheerful chirp
Of crickets, and low lisp of rippling tide,
Light summer clouds fantastical as sleep
Changing unnoted while I gazed thereon.
All these fair sounds and sights I made my own.

With What Grace I Can

Lillies

Happy Easter!

The Easter Flower

by Claude McKay

Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,
Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily
Soft-scented in the air for yards around;

Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf!
Just like a fragile bell of silver rime,
It burst the tomb for freedom sweet and brief
In the young pregnant year at Eastertime;

And many thought it was a sacred sign,
And some called it the resurrection flower;
And I, a pagan, worshiped at its shrine,
Yielding my heart unto its perfumed power.

 

Mirror in February

by Thomas Kinsella

The day dawns, with scent of must and rain,
Of opened soil, dark trees, dry bedroom air.
Under the fading lamp, half dressed – my brain
Idling on some compulsive fantasy –
I towel my shaven jaw and stop, and stare,
Riveted by a dark exhausted eye,
A dry downturning mouth.

It seems again that it is time to learn,
In this untiring, crumbling place of growth
To which, for the time being, I return.
Now plainly in the mirror of my soul
I read that I have looked my last on youth
And little more; for they are not made whole
That reach the age of Christ.

Below my window the wakening trees,
Hacked clean for better bearing, stand defaced
Suffering their brute necessities;
And how should the flesh not quail, that span for span
Is mutilated more? In slow distaste
I fold my towel with what grace I can,
Not young, and not renewable, but man.

I Know My Soul

Terrance Hayes

“If you think a hammer is the only way to hammer / A nail, you ain’t thought of the nail correctly.”

Terrance Hayes

I See A Part And Not The Whole

by Claude McKay

I plucked my soul out of its secret place,
And held it to the mirror of my eye,
To see it like a star against the sky,
A twitching body quivering in space,
A spark of passion shining on my face.
And I explored it to determine why
This awful key to my infinity
Conspires to rob me of sweet joy and grace.
And if the sign may not be fully read,
If I can comprehend but not control,
I need not gloom my days with futile dread,
Because I see a part and not the whole.
Contemplating the strange, I’m comforted
By this narcotic thought: I know my soul.

American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin
[“Inside me is a black-eyed animal”]

by Terrance Hayes

Inside me is a black-eyed animal
Bracing in a small stall. As if a bird
Could grow without breaking its shell.
As if the clatter of a thousand black
Birds whipping in a storm could be held
In a shell. Inside me is a huge black
Bull balled small enough to fit inside
The bead of a nipple ring. I mean to leave
A record of my raptures. I was raised
By a beautiful man. I loved his grasp of time.
My mother shaped my grasp of space.
Would you rather spend the rest of eternity
With your wild wings bewildering a cage or
With your four good feet stuck in a plot of dirt?

We Must Meet The Common Foe!

Claude McKay
Claude McKay (1889 – 1948)

“Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.”

Martin Luther King

If We Must Die

by Claude McKay

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

 

It is difficult to not be bitter the past few days. There has been no tranquility this week in Minneapolis, just collective grief and anger over the tragic death of George Floyd.  I can not make sense of this violence. It is too senseless. Why did this happen? Why does it keep happening? What has to change for police offers in Minneapolis and else where around the country to stop killing unarmed black men? What has to change in the hearts of men to stop being afraid and start being brave enough to care about the humanity of each and every person in their community?

Interviews with George Floyd’s loved ones have shared that he was proud to call Minneapolis home.  I have been proud to call Minneapolis and Minnesota my home, but I am not proud today. I am ashamed that this city and state are in the global headlines for the vilest of reasons – violence, racism, police brutality, police indifference, and injustice.  I hope one day that we can restore that pride, by making genuine strides to address these issues to address the injustices of equality that plague our society.

Saying I am sorry is not enough.  This community did not do what it should have done; value and protect Floyd’s life.  We can hold the men responsible, we can act towards justice but it’s not enough.  We need change.  We need to demand fundamental change. I am appalled that the policemen sworn to protect and serve do not understand the concepts of –  protect and serve.  I am deeply saddened for the family and friends of George Floyd. I am sad for this community, sad that violence by white men in positions of power steal from all of us; a sense of safety, a sense of collective good will, a measure of our self respect.

Martin Luther King is quoted as saying:

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

Today I’m crawling, having been brought to my knees in sadness and shame.   But I hope, somehow, we can keep moving forward as a community and as a country and as a global community.  George Floyd deserved better.  We can do better.

 

Be Not Deceived, For Every Deed You Do

McKay
Claude McKay (1889 – 1948)

“I know the dark delight of being strange,
The penalty of difference in the crowd,
The loneliness of wisdom among fools,
Yet never have I felt but very proud,
Though I have suffered agonies of hell,
Of living in my own peculiar cell.

― Claude McKay – My House

To The White Fiends

by Claude McKay

THINK you I am not fiend and savage too?
Think you I could not arm me with a gun
And shoot down ten of you for every one
Of my black brothers murdered, burnt by you?
Be not deceived, for every deed you do
I could match –out-match: am I not Africa’s son,
Black of that black land where black deeds are done?

But the Almighty from the darkness drew
My soul and said: Even though shaft be a light
Awhile to burn on benighted earth,
Thy dusky face I set among the white
For thee to prove thyself of highest worth;
Before the world is swallowed up at night,
To show thy little lamp: go forth, go forth!

America

by Claude McKay

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

 

That’s What Hopping’s All About

hopscotch
Hopscotch at a Harlem Community Center

“If a person is not faithful to their individuality, then they cannot be loyal to anything.”

Claude McKay

Harlem Hopscotch

by Maya Angelou

One foot down, then hop! It’s hot.
.   .Good things for the ones that’s got.
Another jump, now to the left.
  .   .Everybody for hisself.

In the air, now both feet down.
 .    .Since you black, don’t stick around.
Food is gone, the rent is due,
.    .Curse and cry and then jump two.

All the people out of work,
.    . Hold for three, then twist and jerk.
Cross the line, they count you out.
  .    .That’s what hopping’s all about.

Both feet flat, the game is done.
They think I lost. I think I won.

Source: The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (Random House, Inc., 1994)

Life can take surprising turns when you least expect it. I am convinced that poetry is a vehicle for change and always has been.  The power of poetry is in its ability to transport the human condition from a current state to a future state, a state in which you win. Poetry can be therapeutic, it can be a form of anarchy, a way to protest, a celebration or a way to reveal a truth beyond which the world is ready to see at that time, but a time capsule waiting for the future where it will be better understood. Writers like Maya Angelou and Claude McKay used poetry and novels to move themselves and society towards a better future and a better version of themselves.

I have spent the past 4 months editing and re-editing poems that have become two separate chap books.  It is work that goes back 5 years.  I have begun the process of socializing that work, handing out copies and inviting people to read it and give me feedback.  And in that process of welcoming vulnerability, and being open in my mind to change, a door has opened for a relationship to the future that is not predestined, nor constrained.

I had the pleasure again over the weekend of seeing how words and experience braid themselves together perfectly until you can’t tell which one is a testament to the other, which one the record, which one the experience, which is action or the corresponding reaction.   So in these final days of February if you are in need of a change in your life, find the right words to describe that change as best you can, whether they are your own or someone else’s. Keep reading them, keep absorbing them. Keep editing them, keep reading them. Invite others to read them too. And then be open to the power of transformation those words might create in your life.  Find the words that say to you, in whatever form they may be; “I win.”

The Harlem Dancer

by Claude McKay

Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes
And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway;
Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes
Blown by black players upon a picnic day
She sang and danced on gracefully and calm,
The light gauze hanging loose about her form;
To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm
Grown lovelier for passing through a storm.
Upon her swarthy neck black, shiny curls
Profusely fell; and, tossing coins in praise,
The wine-flushed, bold- eyed boys, even the girls,
Devoured her with their eager, passionate gaze;
But, looking at her falsely-smiling face,
I knew her self was not in that strange place.

Whirling Fantastic

 

Luminary Loppet
Luminary Loppet Minneapolis, MN

The Snow Fairy

by Claude McKay

I

Throughout the afternoon I watched them there,
Snow-fairies falling, falling from the sky,
Whirling fantastic in the misty air,
Contending fierce for space supremacy.
And they flew down a mightier force at night,
As though in heaven there was revolt and riot,
And they, frail things had taken panic flight
Down to the calm earth seeking peace and quiet.
I went to bed and rose at early dawn
To see them huddled together in a heap,
Each merged into the other upon the lawn,
Worn out by the sharp struggle, fast asleep.
The sun shone brightly on them half the day,
By night they stealthily had stol’n away.

We have had not one but two significant snow storms this week.  We have surpassed the monthly average total for snow fall in Minneapolis and here it is only barely the end of the first week of February.  Unfortunately prior to the snows fell a sheet of ice such that everything was coated with treachery, driving reduced to a crawl until the salt could work and walking even more of a nuisance.  It didn’t deter my enjoyment of the snow.  I am one of those people who want a healthy taste of winter, so that we know what its like to be cold.  We need to touch our lizard brains with a reminder to be grateful when the sun warms us upon a rock next summer.

Claude McKay is making a reappearance on Fourteenlines.  McKay is one of my favorite poets, along with Langston Hughes of the Harlem Renaissance. I like this poem as it shows that McKay’s writing was also a poetic voice aboout beauty in our world.

It has not been a good week for the Democratic party in terms of leading by example.  We have the top three elected state wide officials in the Commmonwealth of Virginia all either admiting to or being accused of actions that if confirmed, should lead to their resignations.  A reminder that no one political party has a monopoly on stupidity.  I don’t have to wonder what McKay and Hughes would have written about our current state of politics, for as rocky as things are currently in the state of our union, things are not nearly as bad, nor is the putrification of racism any more virulent than it was a hundred years ago.  Both writers were consistent in their unvarnished depiction of the impact of racism on diminishing all of society from its potential.  But neither poet allowed racism to poison their hearts, they saw its adherants wounded by stupidity and worthy of pity as well as being loathsome for their beliefs. McKay did not hide his bitterness in his writing, nor did he wallow in it either, transcending the darkness of bigotry to also depict the joy of being alive on a winters day, with the hope of spring not far ahead.

Here’s part II of The Snow Fairy.

II

And suddenly my thoughts then turned to you
Who came to me upon a winter’s night,
When snow-sprites round my attic window flew,
Your hair disheveled, eyes aglow with light.
My heart was like the weather when you came,
The wanton winds were blowing loud and long;
But you, with joy and passion all aflame,
You danced and sang a lilting summer song.
I made room for you in my little bed,
Took covers from the closet fresh and warm,
A downful pillow for your scented head,
And lay down with you resting in my arm.
You went with Dawn. You left me ere the day,
The lonely actor of a dreamy play.

Thunder Snow!

file1-1 (1)
A Foot or Two?  Record Breaking Snow in Minneapolis April 14-15, 2018

 

A Dust of Snow

by Robert Frost

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

 

I have a friend who is a self professed crow by nature.   I was fortunate to be under the sway of her good nature and inquisitive spirit during the recent snow storm and it reminded me of Robert Frost’s playful poem.  We actually experienced the phenomenon of thunder snow on Friday night, complete with lightning as snow flakes came down.

For as powerful a metaphor that snow provides there are surprisingly few sonnets that have snow as a central character.   The most famous is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s sonnet The Cross of Snow, written about the tragic death of his wife Fanny.   Its a sad poem that doesn’t fit the humor of this April blizzard, so I rejected it as a fit in favor of Claude McKays more optimistic ode.  McKay’s wish for winter to stick around a little longer has been granted here in Minnesota, but fair warning any Frosty the Snowman,  temperatures are forecast in the mid 40’s the rest of the week, so the snow will disappear quickly and the robins can get back to building nests.

Our snowfall totals for the year are actually about average, it only felt like 15 feet.   For a little good clean snow-white fun, check out Nick Cave’s video below.

To Winter

by Claude McKay
Stay, season of calm love and soulful snows!
There is a subtle sweetness in the sun,
The ripples on the stream’s breast gaily run,
The wind more boisterously by me blows,
And each succeeding day now longer grows.
The birds a gladder music have begun,
The squirrel, full of mischief and of fun,
From maples’ topmost branch the brown twig throws.
I read these pregnant signs, know what they mean:
I know that thou art making ready to go.
Oh stay! I fled a land where fields are green
Always, and palms wave gently to and fro,
And winds are balmy, blue brooks ever sheen,
To ease my heart of its impassioned woe.

Those Who Know

shutterstock-garvey
Marcus Garvey

 

I am not proud that I am bold
Or proud that I am black.
Color was given me as a gauge
And boldness came with that.

Helene Johnson

The Tired Worker

By Claude McKay

O whisper, O my soul! The afternoon
Is waning into evening, whisper soft!
Peace, O my rebel heart! for soon the moon
From out its misty veil will swing aloft!
Be patient, weary body, soon the night
Will wrap thee gently in her sable sheet,
And with a leaden sigh thou wilt invite
To rest thy tired hands and aching feet.
The wretched day was theirs, the night is mine;
Come tender sleep, and fold me to thy breast.
But what steals out the gray clouds like red wine?
O dawn! O dreaded dawn! O let me rest
Weary my veins, my brain, my life! Have pity!
No! Once again the harsh, the ugly city.

 

Those Who Know

by Marcus Garvey

You may not know, and that is all
That causes you to fail in life;
All men should know, and thus not fall
The victims of the heartless strife.
Know what? Know what is right and wrong,
Know just the things that daily count,
That go to make all life a song,
And cause the wise to climb the mount.

To make man know, is task, indeed,
For some are prone to waste all time:
It’s only few who see the need
To probe and probe, then climb and climb,
The midnight light, the daily grind,
Are tasks that count for real success
In life of those not left behind,
Whom Nature chooses then to bless.

The failing men you meet each day,
Who curse their fate, and damn the rest,
Are just the sleeping ones who play
While others work to reach the best.
All life must be a useful plan,
That calls for daily, serious work-
The work that wrings the best from man-
The work that cowards often shirk.

All honour to the men who know,
By seeking after Nature’s truths:
In wisdom they shall ever grow,
While others hum the awful “blues”
Go now and search for what there is-
The knowledge of the Universe-
Make it yours, as the other, his,
And be as good, but not the worse.