Claude McKay: Harlem Shadows

I hear the halting footsteps of a lass 

In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall 

Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass 

To bend and barter at desire’s call. 

Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet 

Go prowling through the night from street to street! 

.

Through the long night until the silver break 

Of day the little gray feet know no rest; 

Through the lone night until the last snow-flake 

Has dropped from heaven upon the earth’s white breast, 

The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet 

Are trudging, thinly shod, from street to street. 

.

Ah, stern harsh world, that in the wretched way 

Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace, 

Has pushed the timid little feet of clay, 

The sacred brown feet of my fallen race! 

Ah, heart of me, the weary, weary feet 

In Harlem wandering from street to street. 

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Public Domain

Source: Harlem Shadows (Harcourt Brace and Company, 1922)

Festus Claudius “Claude” McKay (1889 – 1948) was a Jamaican journalist, fiction writer and poet, who was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He wrote four novels: Home to Harlem (1928), a best-seller that won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, Banjo (1929), Banana Bottom (1933), and in 1941 a manuscript called Amiable With Big Teeth: A Novel of the Love Affair Between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem which remained unpublished until 2017. McKay also authored collections of poetry, a collection of short stories, Gingertown (1932), two autobiographical books, A Long Way from Home (1937) and My Green Hills of Jamaica (published posthumously), and a non-fiction, socio-historical treatise entitled Harlem: Negro Metropolis (1940). His 1922 poetry collection, Harlem Shadows, was among the first books published during the Harlem Renaissance. His Selected Poems was published posthumously, in 1953. [Bio adapted from Wikipedia]