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Gwendolyn B. Bennet: Four Poems
Heritage (1923)
I want to see the slim palm-trees,
Pulling at the clouds
With little pointed fingers …
I want to see lithe Negro girls,
Etched dark against the sky
While sunset lingers.
I want to hear the silent sands,
Singing to the moon
Before the Sphinx-still face …
I want to hear the chanting
Around a heathen fire
Of a strange black race.
I want to breathe the Lotus flow’r,
Sighing to the stars
With tendrils drinking at the Nile …
I want to feel the surging
Of my sad people’s soul
Hidden by a minstrel-smile.
~~
Epitaph (1924)
When I am dead, carve this upon my stone:
Here lies a woman, fit root for flower and tree,
Whose living flesh, now mouldering round the bone,
Wants nothing more than this for immortality,
That in her heart, where love so long unfruited lay
A seed for grass or weed shall grow,
And push to light and air its heedless way;
That she who lies here dead may know
Through all the putrid marrow of her bones
The searing pangs of birth,
While none may know the pains nor hear the groans
Of she who lived with barrenness upon the earth.
~~
Lines Written at the Grave of Alexandre Dumas (1926)
Cemeteries are places for departed souls
And bones interred,
Or hearts with shattered loves.
A woman with lips made warm for laughter
Would find grey stones and roving spirits
Too chill for living, moving pulses . . .
And thou, great spirit, wouldst shiver in thy granite shroud
Should idle mirth or empty talk
Disturb thy tranquil sleeping.
A cemetery is a place for shattered loves
And broken hearts …
Bowed before the crystal chalice of thy soul,
I find the multi-colored fragrance of thy mind
Has lost itself in Death’s transparency.
Oh, stir the lucid waters of thy sleep
And coin for me a tale
Of happy loves and gems and joyous limbs
And hearts where love is sweet!
A cemetery is a place for broken hearts
And silent thought …
And silence never moves,
Nor speaks nor sings.
~~
To a Dark Girl (1927)
I love you for your brownness,
And the rounded darkness of your breast,
I love you for the breaking sadness in your voice
And shadows where your wayward eyelids rest.
Something of old forgotten queens
Lurks in the lithe abandon of your walk
And something of the shackled slave
Sobs in the rhythm of your talk.
Oh, little brown girl, born for sorrow’s mate,
Keep all you have of queenliness,
Forgetting that you once were slave,
And let your full lips laugh at Fate!
~~~~
Public Domain
Gwendolyn B. Bennett (1902 – 1981) was a multitalented American poet, artist, columnist, educator, and arts administrator associated with the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s. Though Bennett’s body of poetry was modest, with around thirty of them published in The Crisis, Opportunity, and a few anthologies, they earned respect from her peers.
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Wow. I haven’t read Gwendolyn B. Bennett since I was a teenager. Loved “To a Dark Girl (1927)” back in the 1970s when I was absorbing a lot of Black poetry and posting pieces on my bedroom wall near the door so I could be inspired anytime. Thanks for posting these, Michael!
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Thanks, Desne!
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“Oh, little brown girl, born for sorrow’s mate”!
I will burn a candle all day for her, and for MLK…
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Yes, the times are dark.
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thank you for introducing me to this poet I didn’t know!
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Thanks, Alison!
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Thanks for introducing me to her work.
Charles ________________________________
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Thanks, Charles.
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She did indeed have a lot of courage and talent and contributed to black pride and self confidence with her writing. She was also incredibly brave to touch on homosexuality in her writing: “I love you for your brownness, / And the rounded darkness of your breast, / I love you for the breaking sadness in your voice / And shadows where your wayward eyelids rest.” Just beautiful.
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Yes. I just discovered her poems recently. I’m grateful for them.
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I like these poems for their music and imagery, but also they are historically important. In the 1920s, it was brave and original to write a poem praising a dark girl and to talk about Dumas being a Black man.
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continuing…He told us that Dr King recognized the theology of liberation had to address setting both the opressed and the oppressor free, or neither would be be loosed from Spiritual Bondage. The latter task as difficult as the former.
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Oh my God what greatness has visited us on a day of greatness. This upside down Nation in which we live! We haven’t any idea of our wealth. Here it is-Here in this great fund of loveliness and imagination, we imprison, ignore, and kill. What to do about the soul of America. Our pastor in a Wednesday night forum told us The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, essentially Dr king’s Organization we could at that moment also refer to as “The Black Church”, had as its mission, first and foremost one thing: To save the soul of America.
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Thank you, Michael, for choosing these Gwendolyn Brooks poems and featuring them on this MLK holiday (this MLK holy day).
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