Arna Bontemps, "Blight" (1927)
I HAVE seen a lovely thing
Stark before a whip of weather:
The tree that was so wistful after spring
Beating barren twigs together.
The birds that came there one by one,
The sensuous leaves that used to sway
And whisper there at night, all are gone,
Each has vanished in its way.
And this whip is on my heart;
There is no sound that it allows,
No little song that I may start
But I hear the beating of dead boughs.
Published in Caroling Dusk, 1927