Color (Cullen)/To You Who Read My Book

by Countee Cullen

To You Who Read
My Book

SOON every sprinter,
 However fleet,
Comes to a winter
 Of sure defeat:
Though he may race
 Like the hunted doe,
Time has a pace
 To lay him low.

Soon we who sing,
 However high,
Must face the Thing
 We cannot fly.
Yea, though we fling
 Our notes to the sun,
Time will outsing
 Us every one.

All things must change
 As the wind is blown;
Time will estrange
 The flesh from the bone.
The dream shall elude
 The dreamer's clasp,
And only its hood
 Shall comfort his grasp.

A little while,
 Too brief at most,
And even my smile
 Will be a ghost.
A little space,
 A Finger's crook,
And who shall trace
 The path I took?

Who shall declare
 My whereabouts;
Say if in the air
 My being shouts
Along light ways,
 Or if in the sea,
Or deep earth stays
 The germ of me?

Ah, none knows, none,
 Save (but too well)
The Cryptic One
 Who will not tell.

This is my hour
 To wax and climb,
Flaunt a red flower
 In the face of time.
And only an hour
 Time gives, then snap
Goes the flower,
 And dried is the sap.

Juice of the first
 Grapes of my vine,
I proffer your thirst
 My own heart's wine.
Here of my growing
 A red rose sways,
Seed of my sowing,
 And work of my days.

(I run, but time's
 Abreast with me;
I sing, but he climbs
 With my highest C.)

Drink while my blood
 Colors the wine,
Reach while the bud
 Is still on the vine. . . .

Then . . .
 When the hawks of death
Tear at my throat
 Till song and breath
Ebb note by note,
 Turn to this book
Of the mellow word
 For a singing look
At the stricken bird.

 Say, "This is the way
He chirped and sung,
 In the sweet heyday
When his heart was young.
 Though his throat is bare,
By death defiled,
 Song labored there
And bore a child."

When the dreadful Ax
 Rives me apart,
When the sharp wedge cracks
 My arid heart,
Turn to this book
 Of the singing me
For a springtime look
 At the wintry tree.

Say, "Thus it was weighed
 With flower and fruit,
Ere the Ax was laid
 Unto its root.
Though the blows fall free
 On a gnarled trunk now,
Once he was a tree
 With a blossomy bough."