And often I wished you dead.
Often and often you cut me cold.
Often I wished you dead.
Then a white girl passed you by one day,
And, the vixen, she gave you the wink.
And your stomach got sick and your legs liquefied.
And you thought till you couldn’t think.
You thought,
You thought,
You thought till you couldn’t think.
I fancy you out on the fringe of town,
The moon an owl’s eye minding;
The sweet and thick of the cricket-belled dark,
The fire within you winding . . . .
Winding,
Winding . . . .
The fire within you winding.
Say, she was white like milk, though, wasn’t she?
And her breasts were cups of cream.
In the back of her Buick you drank your fill.
Then she roused you out of your dream.
In the back of her Buick you drank your fill.
Then she roused you out of your dream.
“You raped me, nigger,” she softly said.
(The shame was threading through.)
“You raped me, nigger, and what the hell
Do you think I’m going to do?
What the hell,
What the hell
Do you think I’m going to do?
“I’ll tell every white man in this town.
I’ll tell them all of my sorrow.
You got my body tonight, nigger boy.
I’ll get your body tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
I’ll get your body tomorrow.”
And my glory but Sammy she did! She did!
And they stole you out of the jail.
They wrapped you around a cottonwood tree.
And they laughed when they heard you wail.
Laughed,
Laughed.
They laughed when they heard you wail.
And I was laughing, down at my house.
Laughing fit to kill.
You got what you wanted for dinner,
But brother you paid the bill.
Brother,
Brother,
Brother you paid the bill.
You paid for your dinner, Sammy boy,
And you didn’t pay with money.
You paid with your hide and my heart, Sammy boy,
For your taste of pink and white honey,
Honey,
Honey.
For your taste of pink and white honey.
Oh, dig me out of my don’t-despair.
Oh, pull me out of my poor-me.
Oh, get me a garment of red to wear.
You had it coming surely.
Surely.
Surely.
You had it coming surely.
FROM Gay Chaps at the Bar
souvenir for Staff Sergeant Raymond Brooks and every other soldier
gay chaps at the bar
. . . and guys I knew in the States, young officers, return from the front crying and trembling. Gay chaps at the bar in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York. . . .
LIEUTENANT WILLIAM COUCH
in the South Pacific
We knew how to order. Just the dash
Necessary. The length of gaiety in good taste.
Whether the raillery should be slightly iced
And given green, or served up hot and lush.
And we knew beautifully how to give to women
The summer spread, the tropics, of our love.
When to persist, or hold a hunger off.
Knew white speech. How to make a look an omen.
But nothing ever taught us to be islands.
And smart, athletic language for this hour
Was not in the curriculum. No stout
Lesson showed how to chat with death. We brought
No brass fortissimo, among our talents,
To holler down the lions in this air.
still do I keep my look, my identity . . .
Each body has its art, its precious prescribed
Pose, that even in passion’s droll contortions, waltzes,
Or push of pain—or when a grief has stabbed,
Or hatred hacked—is its, and nothing else’s.
Each body has its pose. No other stock
That is irrevocable, perpetual
And its to keep. In castle or in shack.
With rags or robes. Through good, nothing, or ill.
And even in death a body, like no other
On any hill or plain or crawling cot
Or gentle for the lilyless hasty pall
(Having twisted, gagged, and then sweet-ceased bother),
Shows the old personal art, the look. Shows what
It showed at baseball. What it showed in school.
my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell
I hold my honey and I store my bread
In little jars and cabinets of my will.
I label clearly, and each latch and lid
I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.
I am very hungry. I am incomplete.
And none can tell when I may dine again.
No man can give me any word but Wait,
The puny light. I keep eyes pointed in;
Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt
Drag out to their last dregs and I resume
On such legs as are left me, in such heart
As I can manage, remember to go home,
My taste will not have turned insensitive
To honey and bread old purity could love.
looking
You have no word for soldiers to enjoy
The feel of, as an apple, and to chew
With masculine satisfaction. Not “good-by!”
“Come back!” or “careful!” Look, and let him go.
“Good-by!” is brutal, and “come back!” the raw
Insistence of an idle desperation
Since could he favor he would favor now.
He will be “careful!” if he has permission.
Looking is better. At the dissolution
Grab greatly with the eye, crush in a steel
Of study—Even that is vain. Expression,
The touch or look or word, will little avail,
The brawniest will not beat back the storm
Nor the heaviest haul your little boy from harm.
mentors
For I am rightful fellow of their band.
My best allegiances are to the dead.
I swear to keep the dead upon my mind,
Disdain for all time to be overglad.
Among spring flowers, under summer trees,
By chilling autumn waters, in the frosts
Of supercilious winter—all my days
I’ll have as mentors those reproving ghosts.
And at that cry, at that remotest whisper,
I’ll stop my casual business. Leave the banquet.
Or leave the ball—reluctant to unclasp her
Who may be fragrant as the flower she wears,
Make gallant bows and dim excuses, then quit
Light for the midnight that is mine and theirs.
the white troops had their orders
but the Negroes looked like men
They had supposed their formula was fixed.
They had obeyed instructions to devise
A type of cold, a type of hooded gaze.
But when the Negroes came they were perplexed.
These Negroes looked like men. Besides, it taxed
Time and the temper to remember those
Congenital iniquities that cause
Disfavor of the darkness. Such as boxed
Their feelings properly, complete to tags—
A box for dark men and a box for Other—
Would often find the contents had been scrambled.
Or even switched. Who really gave two f
igs?
Neither the earth nor heaven ever trembled.
And there was nothing startling in the weather.
love note
I: surely
Surely you stay my certain own, you stay
My you. All honest, lofty as a cloud.
Surely I could come now and find you high,
As mine as you ever were; should not be awed.
Surely your word would pop as insolent
As always: “Why, of course I love you, dear.”
Your gaze, surely, ungauzed as I could want.
Your touches, that never were careful, what they were.
Surely—But I am very off from that.
From surely. From indeed. From the decent arrow
That was my clean naïveté and my faith.
This morning men deliver wounds and death.
They will deliver death and wounds tomorrow.
And I doubt all. You. Or a violet.
the progress
The cracked cry of the bugles, comb and brush
Our pride and prejudice, doctor the sallow
Initial ardor, wish to keep it fresh.
Still we applaud the President’s voice and face.
Still we remark on patriotism, sing,
Salute the flag, thrill heavily, rejoice
For death of men who too saluted, sang.
But inward grows a soberness, an awe,
A fear, a deepening hollow through the cold.
For even if we come out standing up
How shall we smile, congratulate: and how
Settle in chairs? Listen, listen. The step
Of iron feet again. And again wild.
FROM
ANNIE ALLEN | 1949
Notes from the Childhood and the Girlhood
1 the birth in a narrow room
Weeps out of western country something new.
Blurred and stupendous. Wanted and unplanned.
Winks. Twines, and weakly winks
Upon the milk-glass fruit bowl, iron pot,
The bashful china child tipping forever
Yellow apron and spilling pretty cherries.
Now, weeks and years will go before she thinks
“How pinchy is my room! how can I breathe!
I am not anything and I have got
Not anything, or anything to do!”—
But prances nevertheless with gods and fairies
Blithely about the pump and then beneath
The elms and grapevines, then in darling endeavor
By privy foyer, where the screenings stand
And where the bugs buzz by in private cars
Across old peach cans and old jelly jars.
2 Maxie Allen
Maxie Allen always taught her
Stipendiary little daughter
To thank her Lord and lucky star
For eye that let her see so far,
For throat enabling her to eat
Her Quaker Oats and Cream-of-Wheat,
For tongue to tantrum for the penny,
For ear to hear the haven’t-any,
For arm to toss, for leg to chance,
For heart to hanker for romance.
Sweet Annie tried to teach her mother
There was somewhat of something other.
And whether it was veils and God
And whistling ghosts to go unshod
Across the broad and bitter sod,
Or fleet love stopping at her foot
And giving her its never-root
To put into her pocket-book,
Or just a deep and human look,
She did not know; but tried to tell.
Her mother thought at her full well,
In inner voice not like a bell
(Which though not social has a ring
Akin to wrought bedevilling)
But like an oceanic thing:
What do you guess I am?
You’ve lots of jacks and strawberry jam.
And you don’t have to go to bed, I remark,
With two dill pickles in the dark,
Nor prop what hardly calls you honey
And gives you only a little money.
3 the parents: people like our marriage
Maxie and Andrew
Clogged and soft and sloppy eyes
Have lost the light that bites or terrifies.
There are no swans and swallows any more.
The people settled for chicken and shut the door.
But one by one
They got things done:
Watch for porches as you pass
And prim low fencing pinching in the grass.
Pleasant custards sit behind
The white Venetian blind.
4 Sunday chicken
Chicken, she chided early, should not wait
Under the cranberries in after-sermon state.
Who had been beaking about the yard of late.
Elite among the speckle-gray, wild white
On blundering mosaic in the night.
Or lovely baffle-brown. It was not right.
You could not hate the cannibal they wrote
Of, with the nostril bone-thrust, who could dote
On boiled or roasted fellow thigh and throat.
Nor hate the handsome tiger, call him devil
5 old relative
After the baths and bowel-work, he was dead.
Pillows no longer mattered, and getting fed
And anything that anybody said.
Whatever was his he never more strictly had,
Lying in long hesitation. Good or bad,
Hypothesis, traditional and fad.
She went in there to muse on being rid
Of relative beneath the coffin lid.
No one was by. She stuck her tongue out; slid.
Since for a week she must not play “Charmaine”
Or “Honey Bunch,” or “Singing in the Rain.”
6 downtown vaudeville
What was not pleasant was the hush that coughed
When the Negro clown came on the stage and doffed
His broken hat. The hush, first. Then the soft
Concatenation of delight and lift,
And loud. The decked dismissal of his gift,
The sugared hoot and hauteur. Then, the rift
Where is magnificent, heirloom, and deft
Leer at a Negro to the right, or left—
So joined to personal bleach, and so bereft:
Finding if that is locked, is bowed, or proud.
And what that is at all, spotting the crowd.
7 the ballad of late Annie
Late Annie in her bower lay,
Though sun was up and spinning.
The blush-brown shoulder was so bare,
Blush-brown lip was winning.
Out then shrieked the mother-dear,
“Be I to fetch and carry?
Get a broom to whish the doors
Or get a man to marry.”
“Men there were and men there be
But never men so many
Chief enough to marry me,”
Thought the proud late Annie.
“Whom I raise my shades before
Must be gist and lacquer.
With melted opals for my milk,
Pearl-leaf for my cracker.”
8 throwing out the flowers
The duck fats rot in the roasting pan,
And it’s over and over and all,
The fine fraught smiles, and spites that began
Before it was over and all.
The Thanksgiving praying’s away with the silk.
It’s over and over and all.
The broccoli, yams and the bead-buttermilk
Are dead with the hail in the hall,
All
Are dead with the hail in the hall.
The three yellow �
�mums and the one white ’mum
Bear to such brusque burial
With pity for little encomium
Since it’s over and over and all.
Forgotten and stinking they stick in the can,
And the vase breath’s better and all, and all.
And so for the end of our life to a man,
Just over, just over and all.
9 “do not be afraid of no”
“Do not be afraid of no,
Who has so far so very far to go”:
New caution to occur
To one whose inner scream set her to cede, for softer lapping and smooth fur!
Whose esoteric need
Was merely to avoid the nettle, to not-bleed.
Stupid, like a street
That beats into a dead end and dies there, with nothing left to reprimand or meet.
And like a candle fixed
Against dismay and countershine of mixed
Wild moon and sun. And like
A flying furniture, or bird with lattice wing; or gaunt thing, a-stammer down a nightmare neon peopled with condor, hawk and shrike.
To say yes is to die
A lot or a little. The dead wear capably their wry
Enameled emblems. They smell.
But that and that they do not altogether yell is all that we know well.
It is brave to be involved,
To be not fearful to be unresolved.
Her new wish was to smile
When answers took no airships, walked a while.
10 “pygmies are pygmies still, though
percht on Alps”
—EDWARD YOUNG
But can see better there, and laughing there
Pity the giants wallowing on the plain.