The Black Christ, & other poems

Chapter 10: To an Unknown Poet

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About This Book

A debut collection of formally polished poems that moves between intimate lyric and public meditation, exploring love, youth, mortality, faith, and racial identity. The poet employs sonnets and varied forms, classical and Christian imagery, and musical rhythms to examine personal feeling and communal injustice, sometimes elegiac, sometimes celebratory. Several pieces dramatize spiritual questioning and the cost of social servitude, while others reflect on beauty, art, and the paradoxes of pride and poverty. The result is a compact sequence blending technical restraint with vivid metaphor and moral concern.

To an Unknown Poet

“Love is enough,” I read somewhere;

Lines some poor poet in his pride

And poverty wrote on the air

To ease his heart, and soothe his bride.

Something in me, child of an age

Cold to the core, undeified,

Warmed to my brother bard, this sage;

And I too leaned upon my pride.

But pride I found can blind our eyes,

And poverty is worse than pride.

Love’s breed from both is a nest of lies;

And singer of sweet songs, you lied.