A little while,
Too brief at most,
And even my smile
Will be a ghost.
Countee Cullen, excerpt from To You Who Read My Book in Color (1925)
A little while,
Too brief at most,
And even my smile
Will be a ghost.
Countee Cullen, excerpt from To You Who Read My Book in Color (1925)
All night we danced upon our windy hill,
Your dress a cloud of tangled midnight hair,
And love was much too much for me to wear.
Countee Cullen, excerpt from The Dance of Love in Color (1925)
And when your body’s death gives birth
To soil for spring to crown,
Men will not ask if that rare earth
Was white flesh once, or brown.
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
For a Poet, Countee Cullen
And laid them away in a box of gold.
But you danced on, and when some star would spill
Its red and white upon you whirling there,
I sensed a hidden beauty in the air;
Though you danced on, my heart and I stood still.
Countee Cullen, excerpt from The Dance of Love in Color (1925)