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The Black Christ, & other poems cover

The Black Christ, & other poems

Chapter 54: Song of Praise
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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.

Song of Praise

Who lies with his milk-white maiden,
Bound in the length of her pale gold hair,
Cooled by her lips with the cold kiss laden,
He lies, but he loves not there.
Who lies with his nut-brown maiden,
Bruised to the bone by her sin-black hair,
Warmed with the wine that her full lips trade in,
He lies, and his love lies there.