William Faulkner

from Absalom Absalom

From a little after two oclock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that-a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them. There was a wistaria vine blooming for the second time that summer on a wooden trellis before one window, into which sparrows came now and then in random gusts, making a dry vivid dusty sound before going away: and opposite Quentin, Miss Coldfield in the eternal black which she had worn for forty-three years now, whether for sister, father, or nothusband none knew, sitting so bolt upright in the straight hard chair that was so tall for her that her legs hung straight and rigid as if she had iron shinbones and ankles, clear of the floor with that air of impotent and static rage like children's feet, and talking in that grim haggard amazed voice until at last listening would renege and hearing-sense self-confound and the long-dead object of her impotent yet indomitable frustration would appear, as though by outraged recapitulation evoked, quiet inattentive and harmless, out of the biding and dreamy and victorious dust.

James Merrill

 

Charles on Fire

Another evening we sprawled about discussing

Appearances. And it was the consensus

That while uncommon physical good looks

Continued to launch one, as before, in life

(Among its vaporous eddies and false claims),

Still, as one of us said into his beard,

"Without your intellectual and spiritual 

Values, man, you are sunk." No one but squared

The shoulders of their own unlovliness.

Long-suffering Charles, having cooked and served the meal,

Now brought out little tumblers finely etched

He filled with amber liquor and then passed.

"Say," said the same young man, "in Paris, France,

They do it this way"--bounding to his feet

And touching a lit match to our host's full glass.

A blue flame, gentle, beautiful, came, went

Above the surface. In a hush that fell

We heard the vessel crack. The contents drained

As who should step down from a crystal coach.

Steward of spirits, Charles's glistening hand

All at once gloved itself in eeriness.

The moment passed. He made two quick sweeps and

Was flesh again. "It couldn't matter less,"

He said, but with a shocked, unconscious glance

Into the mirror. Finding nothing changed,

He filled a fresh glass and sank down among us.

Le Roi Jones

 

THE TURNCOAT

The steel fibrous slant & ribboned glint

of water. The Sea. Even my secret speech is moist

with it. When I am alone & brooding, locked in

with dull memories & self hate, & the terrible disorder

of a young man.

I move slowly. My cape spread stiff & pressing cautiously

in the first night wind off the Hudson. I glide down

onto my own roof, peering in at the pitiful shadow of myself.

How can it mean anything? The stop & spout, the

wind’s dumb shift. Creak of the house & wet smells

coming in. Night forms on my left. The blind still

up to admit a sun that no longer exists. Sea move.

I dream long bays & towers . . . & soft steps on moist sand.

I become them, sometimes. Pure flight. Pure fantasy. Lean.

Gwendolyn Brooks

To The Diaspora

you did not know you were Afrika 

When you set out for Afrika 
you did not know you were going. 
Because 
you did not know you were Afrika. 
You did not know the Black continent 
that had to be reached 
was you. 

I could not have told you then that some sun 
would come, 
somewhere over the road, 
would come evoking the diamonds 
of you, the Black continent-- 
somewhere over the road. 
You would not have believed my mouth. 

When I told you, meeting you somewhere close 
to the heat and youth of the road, 
liking my loyalty, liking belief, 
you smiled and you thanked me but very little believed me. 

Here is some sun. Some. 
Now off into the places rough to reach. 
Though dry, though drowsy, all unwillingly a-wobble, 
into the dissonant and dangerous crescendo. 
Your work, that was done, to be done to be done to be done. 

Gwendolyn Brooks

Sadie and Maud

Maud went to college.

Sadie stayed at home.

Sadie scraped life

With a fine-tooth comb.

She didn’t leave a tangle in.

Her comb found every strand.

Sadie was one of the livingest chits

In all the land.

Sadie bore two babies

Under her maiden name.

Maud and Ma and Papa

Nearly died of shame.

When Sadie said her last so-long

Her girls struck out from home.

(Sadie had left as heritage

Her fine-tooth comb.)

Maud, who went to college,

Is a thin brown mouse.

She is living all alone

In this old house.

Gwendolyn Brooks

 a song in the front yard

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.

I want a peek at the back

Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.   

A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now   

And maybe down the alley,

To where the charity children play.   

I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.

They have some wonderful fun.

My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine

How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.   

My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae   

Will grow up to be a bad woman.

That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late

(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.

And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,

And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace   

And strut down the streets with paint on my face.