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Trees are the souls of men
Reaching skyward.
And while each soul
Draws nearer God
Its dark roots cleave
To earthly sod:
Death, only death
Brings triumph to the soul.
The silent grave alone
Can bare the goal.
Then roots and all
Must lie forgot—
To rot.
From Fire!! A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists (November 1926). This poem is in the public domain.
There is a coarseness
In the songs of black men
Coarse as the songs
Of the sea,
There is a weird strangeness
In the songs of black men
Which sounds not strange
To me.
(Philadelphia, Pa.)
South Street is not beautiful,
But the songs of people there
Hold the beauty of the jungle,
And the fervidness of prayer.
South Street has no mansions,
But the hands of South Street men
Built pyramids along the Nile
That Time has failed to rend.