Blackness is a title, is a preoccupation, is a commitment Blacks are to comprehend—

Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got… The damp small pulps with a little… The singers and workers that never… You will never neglect or beat

And if sun comes How shall we greet him? Shall we not dread him, Shall we not fear him After so lengthy a

Oh mother, mother, where is happin… They took my lover’s tallness off… Left me lamenting. Now I cannot g… What I can use an empty heart-cup… He won’t be coming back here any m…

you did not know you were Afrika When you set out for Afrika you did not know you were going. Because you did not know you were Afrika.

People who have no children can be… Attain a mail of ice and insolence… Need not pause in the fire, and in… Hesitate in the hurricane to guard… And when wide world is bitten and…

Into her mother’s bedroom to wash… “My mother is jelly-hearted and sh… Sweet, quiver-soft, irrelevant. N… Only a habit would cry if she shou… A pleasant sort of fool without th…

I hold my honey and I store my br… In little jars and cabinets of my… I label clearly, and each latch an… I bid, Be firm till I return from… I am very hungry. I am incomplete…

AS SEEN BY DISCIPLINES There they are. Thirty at the corner. Black, raw, ready. Sores in the city

One wants a teller in a time like… One’s not a man, one’s not a woman… To bear enormous business all alon… One cannot walk this winding stree… Straight-shouldered, tranquil-eyed…

The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel. We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We

To Marc Crawford from whom the commission Whose broken window is a cry of ar… (success, that winks aware as elegance, as a treasonable fait…

We are things of dry hours and the… Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” mate… Like “rent”, “feeding a wife”, “sa… But could a dream sent up through… Its white and violet, fight with f…