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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=359118" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Shroud of Color</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Lord, being dark," I said, "I cannot bear<br>The further touch of earth, the scented air;<br>Lord, being dark, forewilled to that despair<br>My color shrouds me in, I am as dirt<br>Beneath my brother's heel; there is a hurt<br>In all the simple joys which to a child<br>Are sweet; they are contaminate, defiled<br>By truths of wrongs the childish vision fails<br>To see; too great a cost this birth entails.<br>I strangle in this yoke drawn tighter than<br>The worth of bearing it, just to be man.<br>I am not brave enough to pay the price<br>In full; I lack the strength to sacrifice<br>I who have burned my hands upon a star,<br>And climbed high hills at dawn to view the far<br>Illimitable wonderments of earth,<br>For whom all cups have dripped the wine of mirth,<br>For whom the sea has strained her honeyed throat<br>Till all the world was sea, and I a boat<br>Unmoored, on what strange quest I willed to float;<br>Who wore a many-colored coat of dreams,<br>Thy gift, O Lord--I whom sun-dabbled streams<br>Have washed, whose bare brown thighs have held the sun<br>Incarcerate until his course was run,<br>I who considered man a high-perfected<br>Glass where loveliness could lie reflected,<br>Now that I sway athwart Truth's deep abyss,<br>Denuding man for what he was and is,<br>Shall breath and being so inveigle me<br>That I can damn my dreams to hell, and be<br>Content, each new-born day, anew to see<br>The steaming crimson vintage of my youth<br>Incarnadine the altar-slab of Truth?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Or hast Thou, Lord, somewhere I cannot see,<br>A lamb imprisoned in a bush for me?<br>Not so?Then let me render one by one<br>Thy gifts, while still they shine; some little sun<br>Yet gilds these thighs; my coat, albeit worn,<br>Still hold its colors fast; albeit torn.<br>My heart will laugh a little yet, if I<br>May win of Thee this grace, Lord:on this high<br>And sacrificial hill 'twixt earth and sky,<br>To dream still pure all that I loved, and die.<br>There is no other way to keep secure<br>My wild chimeras, grave-locked against the lure<br>Of Truth, the small hard teeth of worms, yet less<br>Envenomed than the mouth of Truth, will bless<br>Them into dust and happy nothingness.<br>Lord, Thou art God; and I, Lord, what am I<br>But dust?With dust my place.Lord, let me die."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Across earth's warm, palpitating crust<br>I flung my body in embrace; I thrust<br>My mouth into the grass and sucked the dew,<br>Then gave it back in tears my anguish drew;<br>So hard I pressed against the ground, I felt<br>The smallest sandgrain like a knife, and smelt<br>The next year's flowering; all this to speed<br>My body's dissolution, fain to feed<br>The worms.And so I groaned, and spent my strength<br>Until, all passion spent, I lay full length<br>And quivered like a flayed and bleeding thing.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So lay till lifted on a great black wing<br>That had no mate nor flesh-apparent trunk<br>To hamper it; with me all time had sunk<br>Into oblivion; when I awoke<br>The wing hung poised above two cliffs that broke<br>The bowels of the earth in twain, and cleft<br>The seas apart.Below, above, to left,<br>To right, I saw what no man saw before:<br>Earth, hell, and heaven; sinew, vein, and core.<br>All things that swim or walk or creep or fly,<br>All things that live and hunger, faint and die,<br>Were made majestic then and magnified<br>By sight so clearly purged and deified.<br>The smallest bug that crawls was taller than<br>A tree, the mustard seed loomed like a man.<br>The earth that writhes eternally with pain<br>Of birth, and woe of taking back her slain,<br>Laid bare her teeming bosom to my sight,<br>And all was struggle, gasping breath, and fight.<br>A blind worm here dug tunnels to the light,<br>And there a seed, racked with heroic pain,<br>Thrust eager tentacles to sun and rain:<br>It climbed; it died; the old love conquered me<br>To weep the blossom it would never be.<br>But here a bud won light; it burst and flowered<br>Into a rose whose beauty challenged, "Coward!"<br>There was no thing alive save only I<br>That held life in contempt and longed to die.<br>And still I writhed and moaned, "The curse, the curse,<br>Than animated death, can death be worse?"</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Dark child of sorrow, mine no less, what art Of mine can make thee see<br>and play thy part? The key to all strange things is in thy heart."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What voice was this that coursed like liquid fire<br>Along my flesh, and turned my hair to wire?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I raised my burning eyes, beheld a field<br>All multitudinous with carnal yield,<br>A grim ensanguined mead whereon I saw<br>Evolve the ancient fundamental law<br>Of tooth and talon, fist and nail and claw.<br>There with the force of living, hostile hills<br>Whose clash the hemmed-in vale with clamor fills,<br>With greater din contended fierce majestic wills<br>Of beast with beast, of man with man, in strife<br>For love of what my heart despised, for life<br>That unto me at dawn was now a prayer<br>For night, at night a bloody heart-wrung tear<br>For day again; for this, these groans<br>From tangled flesh and interlocked bones.<br>And no thing died that did not give<br>A testimony that it longed to live.<br>Man, strange composite blend of brute and god,<br>Pushed on, nor backward glanced where last he trod:<br>He seemed to mount a misty ladder flung<br>Pendant from a cloud, yet never gained a rung<br>But at his feet another tugged and clung.<br>My heart was still a pool of bitterness,<br>Would yield nought else, nought else confess.<br>I spoke (although no form was there<br>To see, I knew an ear was there to hear),<br>"Well, let them fight; they can whose flesh is fair."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Crisp lightning flashed; a wave of thunder shook<br>My wing; a pause, and then a speaking, "Look."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I scarce dared trust my ears or eyes for awe<br>Of what they heard, and dread of what they saw;<br>For, privileged beyond degree, this flesh<br>Beheld God and His heaven in the mesh<br>Of Lucifer's revolt, saw Lucifer<br>Glow like the sun, and like a dulcimer<br>I heard his sin-sweet voice break on the yell<br>Of God's great warriors:Gabriel,<br>Saint Clair and Michael, Israfel and Raphael.<br>And strange it was to see God with His back<br>Against a wall, to see Christ hew and hack<br>Till Lucifer, pressed by the mighty pair,<br>And losing inch by inch, clawed at the air<br>With fevered wings; then, lost beyond repair,<br>He tricked a mass of stars into his hair;<br>He filled his hands with stars, crying as he fell,<br>"A star's a star although it burns in hell."<br>So God was left to His divinity,<br>Omnipotent at that most costly fee.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There was a lesson here, but still the clod<br>In me was sycophant unto the rod,<br>And cried, "Why mock me thus?Am I a god?"</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"One trial more:this failing, then I give You leave to die; no<br>further need to live."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now suddenly a strange wild music smote<br>A chord long impotent in me; a note<br>Of jungles, primitive and subtle, throbbed<br>Against my echoing breast, and tom-toms sobbed<br>In every pulse-beat of my frame.The din<br>A hollow log bound with a python's skin<br>Can make wrought every nerve to ecstasy,<br>And I was wind and sky again, and sea,<br>And all sweet things that flourish, being free.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Till all at once the music changed its key.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And now it was of bitterness and death,<br>The cry the lash extorts, the broken breath<br>Of liberty enchained; and yet there ran<br>Through all a harmony of faith in man,<br>A knowledge all would end as it began.<br>All sights and sounds and aspects of my race<br>Accompanied this melody, kept pace<br>With it; with music all their hopes and hates<br>Were charged, not to be downed by all the fates.<br>And somehow it was borne upon my brain<br>How being dark, and living through the pain<br>Of it, is courage more than angels have.I knew<br>What storms and tumults lashed the tree that grew<br>This body that I was, this cringing I<br>That feared to contemplate a changing sky,<br>This that I grovelled, whining, "Let me die,"<br>While others struggled in Life's abattoir.<br>The cries of all dark people near or far<br>Were billowed over me, a mighty surge<br>Of suffering in which my puny grief must merge<br>And lose itself; I had no further claim to urge<br>For death; in shame I raised my dust-grimed head,<br>And though my lips moved not, God knew I said,<br>"Lord, not for what I saw in flesh or bone<br>Of fairer men; not raised on faith alone;<br>Lord, I will live persuaded by mine own.<br>I cannot play the recreant to these;<br>My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas."<br>With the whiz of a sword that severs space,<br>The wing dropped down at a dizzy pace,<br>And flung me on my hill flat on my face;<br>Flat on my face I lay defying pain,<br>Glad of the blood in my smallest vein,<br>And in my hands I clutched a loyal dream,<br>Still spitting fire, bright twist and coil and gleam,<br>And chiseled like a hound's white tooth.<br>"Oh, I will match you yet," I cried, "to truth."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Right glad I was to stoop to what I once had spurned.<br>Glad even unto tears; I laughed aloud; I turned<br>Upon my back, and though the tears for joy would run,<br>My sight was clear; I looked and saw the rising sun.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Countee+Cullen">Countee Cullen</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=359118" data-title="The Shroud of Color de Countee Cullen" data-description=""Lord, being dark," I said, "I cannot bear The further touch of earth, the scented air; Lord, being dark, forewilled to that despair My color shrouds me in, I am as dirt Beneath my brother's heel; there is a hurt In all the simple j..."></div> </div> </div>
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