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

[larryhammer]

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.

Comments

[mount_oregano]

The Castaways, by Claude McKay

The vivid grass with visible delight
Springing triumphant from the pregnant earth,
The butterflies, and sparrows in brief flight
Chirping and dancing for the season's birth,
The dandelions and rare daffodils
That touch the deep-stirred heart with bands of gold,
The thrushes sending forth their joyous trills, --
Not these, not these did I at first behold!
But seated on the benches daubed with green,
The castaways of life, a few asleep,
Some withered women desolate and mean,
And over all, life's shadows dark and deep.
Moaning I turned away, for misery
I have the strength to bear but not to see.

(Published in "African-American Classics," https://www.amazon.com/African-American-Classics-Graphic-Vol-22/dp/0982563043

[larryhammer]

Nice. Thanks!