"La Golondrina" Thrummed To a lame-stringed guitar. Soft-eyed women With plaited braids At soggy tubs. No gurgling dips In flowing streams To naiad laughter. Metreless brown hands Shaping limp @3tortillas@1 From grocery flour. Lost the old tuned Spat! Spat! Of pestled corn. Fierce gas flames Scorching @3frijoles.@1 No long soft glows Of charcoal, fanned To long slow thoughts. Behold that once-schoolmaster, Slight-built and scholarly, Nodding, workworn, Over Spanish poems. Note that carver of images Whose dream-troubled eyes Study with rue His stiff track-mending hands. Broken rhythms All their craft and art. Tune-lost their lives In exile.... @3America, Can you give them New Music?@1 | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DOWN BY THE CARIB SEA: 2. LOS CIGARILLOS by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON NOBODY'S LOOKIN' BUT DE OWL AND DE MOON (A NEGRO SERENADE) by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON THE SUICIDE by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON ELEGY: 11. THE BRACELET; UPON THE LOSS OF HIS MISTRESS'S CHAIN by JOHN DONNE DIVINATION BY A DAFFADILL by ROBERT HERRICK |