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• 1 2022-06-11T07:35:48-04:00 Countee Cullen, "Threnody for a Brown Girl" (1925) 1 plain 2022-06-11T07:35:48-04:00
  Weep not, you who love her --
  What rebellious flow
  Grief undams shall recover
  Whom the gods bid go?
  Sorrow rising like a wall,
  Bitter, blasphemous --
  What avails it to recall
  Beauty back to us?
  
  Think not this grave shall keep her,
  This marriage-bed confine;
  Death may dig it deep and deeper --
  She shall climb it like a vine.
  Body that was quick and sentient,
  Dear as thought or speech,
  Death could not, with one trenchant
  Blow, snatch out of reach!
  
  She is nearer than the word
  Wasted on her now,
  Nearer than the swaying bird
  On its rhythmic bough.
  Only were our faith as much
  As a mustard seed,
  Aching hungry hands might touch
  Her as they touch a reed.
  
  Life, who was not loth to trade
  Her unto death, has done
  Better than he planned, has made
  Her wise as Solomon.
  Now she knows the Why and Wherefore,
  Troublous Whence and Whither;
  Why men strive and sweat, and care for
  Bays that droop and wither.
  
  All the stars she knows by name,
  End and origin thereof,
  Knows if love be kin to shame,
  If shame be less than love.
  What was crooked now is straight,
  What was rough is plain;
  Grief and sorrow have no weight
  Now to cause her pain.
  
  One to her are flame and frost;
  Silence is her singing lark.
  We alone are children -- lost,
  Crying in the dark.
  Varied features now, and form
  Change has bred upon her;
  Crush no bug or nauseous worm
  Lest you tread upon her.
  
  Pluck no flower lest she scream;
  Bruise no slender reed
  Lest it prove more than it seem,
  Lest she groan and bleed.
  More than ever trust your brother,
  Read him golden, pure --
  It may be she finds no other
  House so safe and sure.
  
  Set no poet carving
  Rhymes to make her laugh;
  Only live hearts starving
  Need an epitaph.
  Lay upon her no white stone
  From a foreign quarry;
  Earth and sky, be these alone
  Her obituary.
  
  Swift as a startled fawn or swallow,
  Silence all her sound,
  She has fled; we cannot follow
  Further than this mound.
  We who take the beaten track,
  Trying to appease
  Hearts near breaking with their lack,
  We need elegies.
  
  First published in Poetry Magazine, May 1925
  Excerpted in The Crisis, July 1925