Homo History: Countee Cullen
“Tableau”:
Locked arm in arm they cross the way,
The black boy and the white,
The golden splendor of the day,
The sable pride of night.
From lowered blinds the dark folk stare,
And here the fair folk talk,
Indignant that these two should dare
In unison to walk.
Oblivious to look and work
They pass, and see no wonder
That lightning brilliant as a sword
Should blaze the path of thunder.
——
“Incident”
Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.
——
“A Brown Girl Dead”
With two white roses on her breasts,
White candles at head and feet,
Dark Madonna of the grave she rests;
Lord Death has found her sweet.
Her mother pawned her wedding ring
To lay her out in white;
She’d be so proud she’d dance and sing
To see herself tonight.
Read more on Countee Cullen at Afropoets, Harvard Square Library and Montevallo’s website.
Maybe I’m lucky that I had an urbane and historically aware mother from Western New York. If I had had only my father to rely on, I’d never have learned even the least bit concerning the Harlem Renaissance. The curse of growing up black in the American south.
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This is an awesome post because I’m often at the Countee Cullen library branch in Harlem but I never knew he was gay. And I had forgotten he wrote that very haunting “That’s all that I remember” poem which I have never forgotten since I read it in school.
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Thanks for the bit of history – I had never heard of him before. His poetry is haunting.