The Black Christ, & other poems

Chapter 32: Self Criticism

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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.

Self Criticism

Shall I go all my bright days singing,

(A little pallid, a trifle wan)

The failing note still vainly clinging

To the throat of the stricken swan?

Shall I never feel and meet the urge

To bugle out beyond my sense

That the fittest song of earth is a dirge,

And only fools trust Providence?

Than this better the reed never turned flute,

Better than this no song,

Better a stony silence, better a mute

Mouth and a cloven tongue.