To hear the rain drool, dimpling, down the drain And splash with a wet giggle in the street, To ramble in the twilight after supper, And to count the pretty faces that you meet. To ride to town on trolleys, crowded, teeming With joy and hurry and laughter and push and sweat-- Squeezed next a patent-leathered Negro dreaming Of a wrinkled river and a minnow net. To buy a paper from a breathless boy, And read of kings and queens in foreign lands, Hyperbole of romance and adventure, All for a penny the color of my hand. To lean against a strong tree’s bosom, sentient And hushed before the silent prayer it breathes, To melt the still snow with my seething body And kiss the warm earth tremulous underneath. Ah, life, to let your stabbing beauty pierce me And wound me like we did the studded Christ, To grapple with you, loving you too fiercely, And to die bleeding--consummate with Life. THE ROAD Ah, little road all whirry in the breeze, A leaping clay hill lost among the trees, The bleeding note of rapture streaming thrush Caught in a drowsy hush And stretched out in a single singing line of dusky song. Ah little road, brown as my race is brown, Your trodden beauty like our trodden pride, Dust of the dust, they must not bruise you down. Rise to one brimming golden, spilling cry! BOTTLED Upstairs on the third floor Of the 135th Street library In Harlem, I saw a little Bottle of sand, brown sand Just like the kids make pies Out of down at the beach. But the label said: “This Sand was taken from the Sahara desert.” Imagine that! The Sahara desert! Some bozo’s been all the way to Africa to get some sand. And yesterday on Seventh Avenue I saw a darky dressed fit to kill In yellow gloves and swallow tail coat And swirling a cane. And everyone Was laughing at him. Me too, At first, till I saw his face When he stopped to hear a Organ grinder grind out some jazz. Boy! You should a seen that darky’s face! It just shone. Gee, he was happy! And he began to dance. No Charleston or Black Bottom for him. No sir. He danced just as dignified And slow. No, not slow either. Dignified and _proud_! You couldn’t Call it slow, not with all the Cuttin’ up he did. You would a died to see him.