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Chapter 61: To One Who Said Me Nay

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About This Book

A collection of tightly crafted lyrics that probe racial identity, aesthetic aspiration, and personal longing. The poet alternates intimate love poems and public meditations, drawing on classical, religious, and contemporary imagery. Recurring themes include the pain and pride of Black experience, the tension between artistic vocation and social constraint, and reflections on mortality and faith. Formally, poems move between sonnet-like lyrics, epigrams, narrative vignettes, and elegies, marked by musical diction, formal control, and occasional irony. Together the pieces balance tenderness and critique to examine how beauty, suffering, and creative voice intersect under social pressures.

To One Who Said Me Nay

THIS much the gods vouchsafe today:

That we two lie in the clover,

Watching the heavens dip and sway,

With galleons sailing over.

This much is granted for an hour:

That we are young and tender,

That I am bee and you are flower,

Honey-mouthed and swaying slender.

This sweet of sweets is ours now:

To wander through the land,

Plucking an apple from its bough

To toss from hand to hand.

No thing is certain, joy nor sorrow,

Except the hour we know it;

Oh, wear my heart today; tomorrow

Who knows where the winds will blow it?