Countee Cullen Short Poems

Famous Short Countee Cullen Poems. Short poetry by famous poet Countee Cullen. A collection of the all-time best Countee Cullen short poems

• Countee Cullen Poems
• Countee Cullen Best Poems

For A Lady I Know  

 She even thinks that up in heaven
Her class lies late and snores

While poor black cherubs rise at seven
To do celestial chores.

The Wise  

 Dead men are wisest, for they know
How far the roots of flowers go,
How long a seed must rot to grow.


Dead men alone bear frost and rain
On throbless heart and heatless brain,
And feel no stir of joy or pain.


Dead men alone are satiate;
They sleep and dream and have no weight,
To curb their rest, of love or hate.


Strange, men should flee their company,
Or think me strange who long to be
Wrapped in their cool immunity.

To Certain Critics  

 Then call me traitor if you must, 
Shout reason and default! 
Say I betray a sacred trust 
Aching beyond this vault.
 
I'll bear your censure as your praise, 
For never shall the clan 
Confine my singing to its ways 
Beyond the ways of man.
 

No racial option narrows grief, 
Pain is not patriot, 
And sorrow plaits her dismal leaf 
For all as lief as not.
 
With blind sheep groping every hill, 
Searching an oriflamme, 
How shall the shpherd heart then thrill 
To only the darker lamb?

Incident  

 Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee;
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.


Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger.
"

I saw the whole of Balimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.

Simon the Cyrenian Speaks  

 He never spoke a word to me,
And yet He called my name;
He never gave a sign to me,
And yet I knew and came.
 
At first I said, "I will not bear
His cross upon my back;
He only seeks to place it there
Because my skin is black.
"

But He was dying for a dream,
And He was very meek,
And in His eyes there shone a gleam
Men journey far to seek.


It was Himself my pity bought;
I did for Christ alone
What all of Rome could not have wrought
With bruise of lash or stone.

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.

For A Poet  

 I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold;
Where long will cling the lips of the moth,
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;
I hide no hate; I am not even wroth
Who found the earth's breath so keen and cold;
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold.