Though loath to grieve
The evil time’s sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My honied thought
For the priest’s cant,

I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the w
My soul has grown deep like the ri
I bathed in the Euphrates when da
I built my hut near the Congo and

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.
I wonder if it’s that simple?

Have you dug the spill
Of Sugar Hill?
Cast your gims
On this sepia thrill:
Brown sugar lassie,

Clean the spittoons, boy.
Detroit,
Chicago,
Atlantic City,
Palm Beach.

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other ni
By the pale dull pallor of an old

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since depart
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried token
Of their sojourn here

She came home running
back to the mothering blackness
deep in the smothering blackness
white tears icicle gold plains of
She came home running

The porter in the Pullman car
Was charming, as they sometimes ar
He scanned my baggage tags: “Are
The man who wrote of Lady Lou?”
When I said “yes” he made a fuss