Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/175

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THE HEART OF WOMANHOOD
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one in the thousand of those who write good verse would deserve them. But I ask the sceptical individual to re-read them after he has perused the poems themselves.

I will present several without interrupting comment:

DAWN

Grey trees, grey skies, and not a star;
Grey mist, grey hush;
And then, frail, exquisite, afar,
A hermit-thrush.

A WINTER TWILIGHT

A silence slipping around like death,
Yet chased by a whisper, a sigh, a breath;
One group of trees, lean, naked and cold,
Inking their crests ’gainst a sky green-gold;
One path that knows where the corn flowers were;
Lonely, apart, unyielding, one fir;
And over it softly leaning down,
One star that I loved ere the fields went brown.

THE PUPPET-PLAYER

Sometimes it seems as though some puppet-player,
A clenched claw cupping a craggy chin.
Sits just beyond the border of our seeing,
Twitching the strings with slow, sardonic grin.