Poems by Georgia Douglas Johnson in "The New Negro" (1925)
Strange to a sensing motherhood,
Loved as a toy—not understood,
Child of a dusky father, bold;
Frail little captive, exiled, cold.
Oft when the brooding planets sleep,
You through their drowsy empires creep,
Flinging your arms through their empty space,
Seeking the breast of an unknown face.
—Georgia Douglas Johnson.
THE ORDEAL
Ho! my brother,
Pass me not by so scornfully
I’m doing this living of being black,
Perhaps I bear your own life-pack,
And heavy, heavy is the load
That bends my body to the road.
But I have kept a smile for fate,
I neither cry, nor cringe, nor hate,
Intrepidly, I strive to bear
This handicap. The planets wear
The Maker’s imprint, _and with mine
I swing into their rhythmic line;
I ask—only for destiny,
Mine, not thine.
—Georgia Douglas Johnson.
ESCAPE
Shadows, shadows,
Hug me round
So that I shall not be found
By sorrow:
She pursues me
Everywhere,
I can’t lose her
Anywhere.
Fold me in your black
Abyss,
She will never look
In this,—
Shadows, shadows,
Hug me round
In your solitude
Profound.
—Georgia Douglas Johnson.
THE RIDDLE
White men’s children spread over the earth—
A rainbow suspending the drawn swords of birth,
Uniting and blending the races in one
The world man—cosmopolite—everyman’s son!
He channels the stream of the red blood and blue,
Behold him! A Triton—the peer of the two;
Unriddle this riddle of “outside in”
White men’s children in black men’s skin.
—Georgia Douglas Johnson.