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The Black Christ, & other poems cover

The Black Christ, & other poems

Chapter 26: Asked and Answered
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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.

Asked and Answered

How have I found this favor in your sight,
And will the flame burn steady to the end,
Until we pass that dark and dangerous bend
Where there is such a crying need for light;
Or will it flare up now, flame-clear and bright,
Sun-like its wealth so far and wide distend
That nothing will remain for us to spend
When toll is taken of the dismal night?
Why should I harrow up my mind like this
To tarnish with a doubt each golden kiss?
This is the Day most certainly. This bars
Us now from any hidden darkness spun.
Sufficient to the day let be the sun,
And to the night the spear-points of the stars.