Color

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 strewn

With 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.