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The Black Christ, & other poems cover

The Black Christ, & other poems

Chapter 48: The Street Called Crooked

By Countee Cullen

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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.

The Street Called Crooked

(Le Havre, August 1928)

“Bon soir, monsieur,” they called to me;

And, “Venez voir nos femmes.”

“Bon soir, mesdames,” they got from me,

And, “J’ai une meilleure dame.”

“To meet strange lips and foreign eyes

I did not cross the foam,

I have a dearer, fairer prize

Who waits for me at home.”

“Her eyes are browner, lips more red

Than any lady’s light;

’Twould grieve her heart and droop her head

If I failed her tonight.”

“Bon soir, mesdames; que Dieu vous garde;

And catch this coin I throw;

The ways of life are bleak and hard,

Ladies, I think you know.”

A bright and crooked street it gleamed

With light and laughter filled;

All night the warm wine frothed and streamed

While souls were stripped and killed.