Claude McKay

Your lips are like a southern lily red, Wet with the soft rain-kisses of the night,
In which the brown bee buries deep its head, When still the dawn's a silver sea of light
Your lips betray the secret of your soul, The dark delicious ess...

So much have I forgotten in ten years,
So much in ten brief years
I have
What time the purple apples come to juice,

Oh something just now must be happening there
That suddenly and quiveringly here,
Amid the city's noises,
I must think Of mangoes leaning o'er the river's brink,

Last night I heard your voice, mother, The words you sang to me When I, a little barefoot boy, Knelt down against your knee
And tears gushed from my heart, mother, And passed beyond its wall, But though the fountain reached my throat The drop...

O lonely heart so timid of approach, Like the shy tropic flower that shuts its lips To the faint touch of tender finger tips:
What is your word
What question would you broach
Your lustrous-warm eyes are too sadly kind To mask the me...

ON thy purple mat thy body bare  Is fine and limber like a tender tree
The motion of thy supple form is rare,  Like a lithe panther lolling languidly,
Toying and turning slowly in her lair
Oh,

I would be wandering in distant fields Where man, and bird, and beast, lives leisurely,
And the old earth is kind, and ever yields Her goodly gifts to all her children free;
Where life is fairer, lighter, less demanding,
And boys an...