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 rare

They stole from out a silvered

world--somewhere.

Finding earth-plains fair plains,

save greenly grassed,

They strewed white feathers of

cowardice, as they passed;

The golden stars with lances fine,

The hills all red and darkened pine,

They blanched with their want of power;

And turned the blood in a ruby rose

To a poor white poppy-flower.

Anne Spencer – Lady, Lady

Lady, Lady, I saw your face,

Dark as night withholding a star . . .

The chisel fell, or it might have been

You 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, Lady, I saw your heart,

And altered there in its darksome place

Were the tongues of flames the ancients knew,

Where the good God sits to spangle through.

Anne Spencer – Earth, I thank you

Earth, I thank you

for the pleasure of your language

You’ve had a hard time

bringing it to me

from the ground

to grunt thru the noun

To all the way

feeling seeing smelling touching

—awareness

I am here!

Anne Spencer – 1975

Turn an earth clod

Peel a shaley rock

In fondness molest a curly worm

Whose familiar is everywhere

Kneel

And the curly worm sentient now

Will light the word that tells the poet what a poem is.

Anne Spencer – He Said

“Your garden at dusk

Is the soul of love

Blurred in its beauty

And softly caressing;

I, gently daring

This sweetest confessing,

Say your garden at dusk

Is your soul. My Love.”