The old woman across the way is whipping the boy again and shouting to the neighborhood her goodness and his wrongs. Wildly he crashes through elephant ears, pleads in dusty zinnias, while she in spite of crippling fat pursues and corners him. She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling boy till the stick breaks in […]
learn moreSundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blue-black cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house.
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices????
Copyright 1966 by Robert Hayden.
learn moreDrifting night in the Georgia pines,
coonskin drum and jubilee banjo.
Pretty Malinda, dance with me.
Night is an African juju man
weaving a wish and a weariness together
to make two wings.
O fly away home fly away
Do you remember Africa?
O cleave the air fly away home
My gran , he flew back to Africa,
just spread his arms
and flew away home.
Drifting night in the windy pines;
night is a laughing, night is a longing.
Pretty Malinda, come to me.
Night is a mourning juju man
weaving a wish and a weariness together
to make two wings.
O
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