For Claude Mckay

Letter me with lines that I may distil The sovereign sweetness of your flaming will Teach me to sing of dusty flowers pure And maiden's savaged innocence no more To scorn, for you in all emotions soar Though self-exiled from our tropical shore Great poet, who brought Apollo's lyre here O could you walk again your Harlem now And find a lullaby for our dispear And steal of words to edifice our vow For we tingle with the doom we must hate And all around us broken, tired of late They sing self songs, until spring flies to ice While in your rapture vice too would suffice. [Claude Mckay was a Jamaican poet, pioneer of the Harlem Rennaissnce, who died in penury in Chicago, after turning from Communism and its lucre to the Catholic faith. His poem "if we must die"was used by Churchill to motivate the allies into war]