“through the storms, through the clouds, the rain / i’m telling you you cannot escape”

For Poetry Monday:


When I Have Passed Away, Claude McKay

When I have passed away and am forgotten,
And no one living can recall my face,
When under alien sod my bones lie rotten
With not a tree or stone to mark the place;

Perchance a pensive youth, with passion burning,
For olden verse that smacks of love and wine,
The musty pages of old volumes turning,
May light upon a little song of mine,

And he may softly hum the tune and wonder
Who wrote the verses in the long ago;
Or he may sit him down awhile to ponder
Upon the simple words that touch him so.


“Alien” is possibly because, while McKay was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance, he was born in Jamaica.

---L.

Subject quote from Rainbow, Sia.