Anne Spencer – Translation

We trekked into a far country, My friend and I. Our deeper content was never spoken, But each knew all the other said. He told me how calm his soul was laid By the lack of anvil and strife. "The wooing kestrel," I said, "mutes his mating-note To please the harmony of...

Anne Spencer – At the Carnival

Gay little Girl-of-the-Diving-Tank,I desire a name for you,Nice, as a right glove fits;For you—who amid the malodorousMechanics of this unlovely thing,Are darling of spirit and form.I know you—a glance, and what you areSits-by-the-fire in my heart.My Limousine-Lady knows you, orWhy...

Anne Spencer – Dunbar

Ah, how poets sing and die!Make one song and Heaven takes it;Have one heart and Beauty breaks it;Chatterton, Shelley, Keats and I—Ah, how poets sing and d...

Anne Spencer – Gilgamesh

IWe lived on a lake with Muscovy ducks.Interior decorators flush with furniture plans,the ducks thrust with the thrust of youth.IIWe met at the gay community center, called Compass,in Lake Worth, where they sponsored “The Coming Out Group,”with Forest, our skilled leader. Transsexuals...

Anne Spencer – Lines to a Nasturtium

        A lover muses Flame-flower, Day-torch, Mauna Loa,I saw a daring bee, today, pause, and soar,Into your flaming heart;Then did I hear crisp crinkled laughterAs the furies after tore him apart?A bird, next, small and humming,Looked into your startled...

Anne Spencer – The Wife-Woman

Maker-of-Sevens in the scheme of thingsFrom earth to star;Thy cycle holds whatever is fate, andOver the border the bar.Though rank and fierce the marinerSailing the seven seas,He prays as he holds his glass to his eyes,Coaxing the Pleiades.I cannot love them; and I feel your glad,Chiding...

Anne Spencer – Before the Feast of Shushan

Garden of Shushan!After Eden, all terrace, pool, and flower recollect thee:Ye weavers in saffron and haze and Tyrian purple,Tell yet what range in color wakes the eye;Sorcerer, release the dreams born here whenDrowsy, shifting palm-shade enspells the brain;And sound! ye with harp...

Anne Spencer – Letter To My Sister

It is dangerous for a womanto defy the gods;To taunt them with the tongue's thin tip,Or strut in the weaknessof mere humanity,Or draw a line daring them to cross;The gods own the searing lightning,The drowning waters, tormenting fearsAnd anger of red sins.Oh, but worse still if you...

Anne Spencer – For Jim, Easter Eve

If ever a garden was Gethsemane,with old tombs set high againstthe crumpled olive tree--and lichen,this, my garden, has been to me.For such as I none other is so sweet:Lacking old tombs, here stands my grief,and certainly its ancient tree.Peace is here and in every seasona quiet...

Anne Spencer – Life-Long, Poor Browning

Life-long, poor Browning never knew Virginia,Or he'd not grieved in Florence for April salliesBack to English gardens after Euclid's linear:Clipt yews, Pomander Walks, and preached alleys;Primroses, prim indeed, in quiet ordered hedges,Waterways, soberly, sedately enchanneled,No...

Anne Spencer – White Things

Most things are colorful things--the sky, earth, and sea.Black men are most men;but the white are free!White things are rare things;so rare, so rareThey stole from out a silveredworld--somewhere.Finding earth-plains fair plains,save greenly grassed,They strewed white feathers ofcowardice,...

Anne Spencer – Lady, Lady

Lady, Lady, I saw your face,Dark as night withholding a star . . .The chisel fell, or it might have beenYou had borne so long the yoke of men.Lady, Lady, I saw your hands,Twisted, awry, like crumpled roots,Bleached poor white in a sudsy tub,Wrinkled and drawn from your rub-a-dub.Lady,...

Anne Spencer – Earth, I thank you

Earth, I thank youfor the pleasure of your languageYou’ve had a hard timebringing it to mefrom the groundto grunt thru the nounTo all the wayfeeling seeing smelling touching—awarenessI am he...

Anne Spencer – 1975

Turn an earth clodPeel a shaley rockIn fondness molest a curly wormWhose familiar is everywhereKneelAnd the curly worm sentient nowWill light the word that tells the poet what a poem ...

Anne Spencer – He Said

“Your garden at duskIs the soul of loveBlurred in its beautyAnd softly caressing;I, gently daringThis sweetest confessing,Say your garden at duskIs your soul. My Lov...

Anne Spencer – Requiem

Oh, I who so wanted to own some earth,Am consumed by the earth instead:Blood into riverBone into landThe grave restores what finds its bed.Oh, I who did drink of Spring’s fragrant clay,Give back its wine for other men:Breath into airHeart into grassMy heart bereft — I might rest...

Anne Spencer – Taboo

Being a Negro Woman is the world’s most excitinggame of “Taboo”: By hell there is nothing you cando that you want to do and by heaven you aregoing to do it anyhow —We do not climb into the jim crow galleriesof scenario houses we stay away and readI read garden and seed catalogs,...