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

Rh 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:

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

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.

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.