You-proud-and-to-be-pitied one, Gaze on her and despair; Then seal your lips until the sun Discovers one as fair. _Brown Boy to Brown Girl_ (_Remembrance on a hill_) (_For Yolande_) “As surely as I hold your hand in mine, As surely as your crinkled hair belies The enamoured sun pretending that he dies While still he loiters in its glossy shine, As surely as I break the slender line That spider linked us with, in no least wise Am I uncertain that these alien skies Do not our whole life measure and confine. No less, once in a land of scarlet suns And brooding winds, before the hurricane Bore down upon us, long before this pain, We found a place where quiet water runs; I held your hand this way upon a hill, And felt my heart forebear, my pulse grow still.” _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. _To a Brown Girl_ (_For Roberta_) What if his glance is bold and free, His mouth the lash of whips? So should the eyes of lovers be, And so a lover’s lips. What if no puritanic strain Confines him to the nice? He will not pass this way again, Nor hunger for you twice. Since in the end consort together Magdalen and Mary, Youth is the time for careless weather: Later, lass, be wary. _To a Brown Boy_ That brown girl’s swagger gives a twitch To beauty like a queen; Lad, never dam your body’s itch When loveliness is seen. For there is ample room for bliss In pride in clean, brown limbs, And lips know better how to kiss Than how to raise white hymns. And when your body’s death gives birth To soil for spring to crown, Men will not ask if that rare earth Was white flesh once, or brown. _Black Magdalens_ These have no Christ to spit and stoop To write upon the sand, Inviting him that has not sinned To raise the first rude hand. And if he came they could not buy Rich ointment for his feet, The body’s sale scarce yields enough To let the body eat. The chaste clean ladies pass them by And draw their skirts aside, But Magdalens have a ready laugh; They wrap their wounds in pride. They fare full ill since Christ forsook The cross to mount a throne, And Virtue still is stooping down To cast the first hard stone. _Atlantic City Waiter_ With subtle poise he grips his tray Of delicate things to eat; Choice viands to their mouths half way, The ladies watch his feet Go carving dexterous avenues Through sly intricacies; Ten thousand years on jungle clues Alone shaped feet like these.