Esthete In Harlem
Strange,
That in this nigger place
I should meet life face to face;
When, for years, I had been seeking
Life in places gentler-speaking,
Until I came to this vile street
And found Life stepping on my feet!
Dinner Guest: Me
I know I am
The Negro Problem
Being wined and dined,
Answering the usual questions
That come to white mind
Which seeks demurely
To probe in polite way
The why and wherewithal
Of darkness U.S.A.-
Wondering how things got this way
in current democratic night,
Murmuring gently
Over fraises du bois,
"I'm so ashamed of being white."
The lobster is delicious,
The wine divine,
And center of attention
At the damask table, mine.
To be a Problem on
Park Avenue at eight
Is not so bad
Solutions to the Problem,
Of course, wait.
Ku Klux
They took me out
To some lonesome place.
They said, "Do you believe
In the great white race?"
I said, "Mister,
To tell you the truth,
I'd believe in anything
If you'd just turn me loose."
The white man said, "Boy,
Can it be
You're a-standin' there
A-sassin' me?"
They hit me in the head
And knocked me down.
And then they kicked me
On the ground.
A Klansman said, "Nigger,
Look me in the face-
And tell me you believe in
The great white race."
Justice
That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.
American Heartbreak
I am the American heartbreak-
The rock on which Freedom
Stumped its toe-
The great mistake
That Jamestown made
Long ago.
Claude McKay (1890-1948)
CM came from the "same proud, prosperous, peasant Jamaican hiss country family
background as Marcus Garvey". He wrote two columns of dialect poetry, Songs of
Jamaica and Constab Ballads, and was financed to go to New York by a white Jamaican
patron. He was estranged from whites, but also from African Americans. McKay quickly
criticized African Americans, including DuBois, but said that he "never had the
slightest desire to insult Harlem society or Negro society anywhere". In a subsidized
trip to England, he was introduced to communism. Returning to Harlem, he became involved
in the NAACP, but still felt estranged. He was "the purest of that special breed that
strives for success only to find it intolerable." In 1922, he published Harlem
Shadows and quickly became the "most famous" poet in Afro- America and a
celebrity in the Village. He says of his struggles during this time; Poor, painful black
face, intruding into the holy places of the whites. How like a specter you haunts! Always
at their elbow, always darkly peering through the window, giving them no peace, no rest...
Dam it all! Goodnight, plays and players. The prison is vast, there is plenty of space and
little time to sing and dance and laugh and love. There is little time to dream of the
jungle. He was said to be "more than a natural poet; his was a lyrical nature. He
thought in rhapsodies and felt in meter, merging his soul with the present moment and
place - and race."
The Harlem Dancer
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 rough a storm.
Upon her swarthy neck black shiny curls
Luxuriant fell; and tossing coins in praise,
The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls,
Devoured her shape with eager, passionate gaze;
But looking at her falsely-smiling face,
I knew her self was not in that strange place.
The Negro's Tragedy
It is the Negro's tragedy I feel
Which binds me like a heavy iron chain,
It is the Negro's wounds I want to heal
Because I know the keenness of his pain.
Only a thorn-crowned Negro and no white
Can penetrate into the Negro's ken,
Or feel the thickness of the shroud of night
Which hides and buries him from other men.
So what I write is urged out of my blood.
There is not white man who could write my book,
Though many think their story should be told
Of what the Negro people ought to brook.
Our statesmen roam the world to set things right.
This Negro laughs and prays to God for Light!
Tiger
The white man is a tiger at my throat,
Drinking my blood as my life ebbs away,
And muttering that his terrible striped coat
Is Freedom's and portends the Light of Day.
Oh white man, you may suck up all my blood
And throw my carcass into potter's field,
But never will I say with you that mud
Is bread for Negroes! Never will I yield.
Europe and African and Asia wait
The touted New Deal of the New World's hand!
New systems will be built on race and hate,
The Eagle and the Dollar will command.
Oh Lord! My body, and my heart too, break-
The tiger in his strength his thirst must slake!
Countee Cullen (1903-1946)
CC was known as Harlem's poet prodigy. A natural poet at a young age, his first
published work was in his high school newspaper. At New York University he pursued his
talent in poetry and won widespread recognition. CC was one of Harlem's own, "a local
product, a living exemplar of Talented Tenth values". CC's parentage was ambiguous,
and his life without a male role model is the source of speculation for his homosexuality.
As one of Harlem's favorites, though, he was forgiven all his psychological and sexual
idiosyncrasies. Although Harlem loved Langston Hughes, they "revered CC, he was the
proper poet with proper credentials".
Incident
Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.
To Certain Critics
Then call me traitor if you must,
Shout reason and default!
Say I betray a sacred trust
Aching beyond this vault.
I'll bear your censure as your praise,
For never shall the clan
Confine my singing to its ways
Beyond the ways of man.
No racial option narrows grief,
Pain is not patriot,
And sorrow plaits her dismal leaf
For all as life as not.
With blind sheep groping every hill,
Searching an oriflamme,
How shall the shepherd heart then thrill
To only the darker lamb?