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9781465679444
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
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I DOUBT not God is good, well-meaning, kind, And did He stoop to quibble could tell why The little buried mole continues blind, Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die, Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus To struggle up a never-ending stair. Inscrutable His ways are, and immune To catechism by a mind too strewnWith petty cares to slightly understand What awful brain compels His awful hand. Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing! YOU have not heard my love’s dark throat, Slow-fluting like a reed, Release the perfect golden note She caged there for my need. Her walk is like the replica Of some barbaric dance Wherein the soul of Africa Is winged with arrogance. And yet so light she steps across The ways her sure feet pass, She does not dent the smoothest moss Or bend the thinnest grass. My love is dark as yours is fair, Yet lovelier I hold her Than listless maids with pallid hair, And blood that’s thin and colder. You-proud-and-to-be-pitied one, Gaze on her and despair; Then seal your lips until the sun Discovers one as fair.

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