Your downcast, harlequin, defenceless face Was turned to ashen flakes, and wavered up In lightly shapeless impotence upon The sprightly scandals of a morning wind, The hands of other men fell on your breast, Like scores of scorpions instinctively Expelled from jungle-spots within their hearts. Your blood, in fine quick problems, spattered out Upon the morning air that studied them And left complete, dry answers on your skin. (Oh, what is life but cold arithmetic Where fractions serve as subtleties and add Refinement to the rise and fall of dull, Blunt numbers shuffled indisputably: And what is death but mathematics where The numbers graduate to higher planes And leave a "terrifying" interest?) Yet, something beyond pain within your shriek Would indicate, black man, that sky-large brains Can stumble in their count and recognize An eerie, unrelenting quality Forever in revolt against their plans. Emotion and its choking metaphors Insist that two times two is never quite The four that "life" methodically brands On nations and the ceaseless pain of men. You were accused of tendering a strong, Experimental hatred to the frail, Intense obstruction of a woman's flesh, And endlessly you squawked your innocence. But crime and justice do not live beyond The point where death, with one, efficient whim, Corrects the tongues of bungling, churlish men. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MAUBERLEY: 5. MEDALLION by EZRA POUND THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER (DEDICATED TO MISS ELLA F. KENNEDY) by SARA S. BASHEFKIN THE WIDOW'S THANKSGIVING by PHOEBE CARY MY MOTHER by WILLIAM LAWRENCE CHITTENDEN THE NURSE AND THE NEWSPAPER; AN OCCASIONAL EPILOGUE by ELIZABETH COBBOLD THE HOUSE OF PRIDE by WILLIAM JAMES DAWSON IMOGEN by WALTER JOHN DE LA MARE |