Poems by Claude McKay

In English – En Français – На Русском Языке – Bilingual

American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Claude McKay – Poems by Claude McKay

In English

A Memory Of June
When June comes dancing o’er the death of May,
With scarlet roses tinting her green breast,
And mating thrushes ushering in her day, … Continue Reading …

A Prayer
’Mid the discordant noises of the day I hear thee calling;
I stumble as I fare along Earth’s way; keep me from falling. … Continue Reading …

A Red Flower
Your lips are like a southern lily red,
Wet with the soft rain-kisses of the night,
In which the brown bee buries deep its head, … Continue Reading …

Absence
Your words dropped into my heart like pebbles into a pool,
Rippling around my breast and leaving it melting cool. … Continue Reading …

Adolescence
There was a time when in late afternoon
The four-o’clocks would fold up at day’s close
Pink-white in prayer, and ’neath the floating moon … Continue Reading …

After The Winter
Some day, when trees have shed their leaves
And against the morning’s white
The shivering birds beneath the eaves … Continue Reading …

Africa
The sun sought thy dim bed and brought forth light,
The sciences were sucklings at thy breast;
When all the world was young in pregnant night … Continue Reading …

Alfonso, Dressing To Wait At Table
Alfonso is a handsome bronze-hued lad
Of subtly-changing and surprising parts;
His moods are storms that frighten and make glad, … Continue Reading …

America
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess … Continue Reading …

Baptism
Into the furnace let me go alone;
Stay you without in terror of the heat.
I will go naked in—for thus ’tis sweet— … Continue Reading …

Birds Of Prey
Their shadow dims the sunshine of our day,
As they go lumbering across the sky,
Squawking in joy of feeling safe on high, … Continue Reading …

Commemoration
When first your glory shone upon my face
My body kindled to a mighty flame,
And burnt you yielding in my hot embrace … Continue Reading …

Courage
O lonely heart so timid of approach,
Like the shy tropic flower that shuts its lips
To the faint touch of tender finger tips: … Continue Reading …

Dawn In New York
The Dawn! The Dawn! The crimson-tinted, comes
Out of the low still skies, over the hills,
Manhattan’s roofs and spires and cheerless domes! … Continue Reading …

December, 1919
Last night I heard your voice, mother,
The words you sang to me
When I, a little barefoot boy, … Continue Reading …

Enslaved
Oh when I think of my long-suffering race,
For weary centuries despised, oppressed,
Enslaved and lynched, denied a human place … Continue Reading …

Exhortation: Summer, 1919
Through the pregnant universe rumbles life’s terrific thunder,
And Earth’s bowels quake with terror; strange and terrible storms break,
Lightning-torches flame the heavens, kindling souls of men, thereunder: … Continue Reading …

Flame Heart
So much have I forgotten in ten years,
So much in ten brief years! I have forgot
What time the purple apples come to juice, … Continue Reading …

Flirtation
Upon thy purple mat thy body bare
Is fine and limber like a tender tree.
The motion of thy supple form is rare, … Continue Reading …

Flower Of Love
The perfume of your body dulls my sense.
I want nor wine nor weed; your breath alone
Suffices. In this moment rare and tense … Continue Reading …

French Leave
No servile little fear shall daunt my will
This morning. I have courage steeled to say
I will be lazy, conqueringly still, … Continue Reading …

Futility
Oh, I have tried to laugh the pain away,
Let new flames brush my love-springs like a feather.
But the old fever seizes me to-day, … Continue Reading …

Harlem Shadows
I hear the halting footsteps of a lass
In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall
Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass … Continue Reading …

Heritage
Now the dead past seems vividly alive,
And in this shining moment I can trace,
Down through the vista of the vanished years, … Continue Reading …

Home Thoughts
Oh something just now must be happening there!
That suddenly and quiveringly here,
Amid the city’s noises, I must think … Continue Reading …

Homing Swallows
Swift swallows sailing from the Spanish main,
O rain-birds racing merrily away
From hill-tops parched with heat and sultry plain … Continue Reading …

I Know My Soul
I plucked my soul out of its secret place,
And held it to the mirror of my eye,
To see it like a star against the sky, … Continue Reading …

I Shall Return
I shall return again; I shall return
To laugh and love and watch with wonder-eyes
At golden noon the forest fires burn, … Continue Reading …

If We Must Die
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, … Continue Reading …

In Bondage
I would be wandering in distant fields
Where man, and bird, and beast, lives leisurely,
And the old earth is kind, and ever yields … Continue Reading …

Jasmines
Your scent is in the room.
Swiftly it overwhelms and conquers me!
Jasmines, night jasmines, perfect of perfume, … Continue Reading …

La Paloma In London
About Soho we went before the light;
We went, unresting six, craving new fun,
New scenes, new raptures, for the fevered night … Continue Reading …

Memorial
Your body was a sacred cell always,
A jewel that grew dull in garish light,
An opal which beneath my wondering gaze … Continue Reading …

Morning Joy
At night the wide and level stretch of wold,
Which at high noon had basked in quiet gold,
Far as the eye could see was ghostly white; … Continue Reading …

My Mother
Reg wished me to go with him to the field,
I paused because I did not want to go;
But in her quiet way she made me yield … Continue Reading …

North And South
O sweet are tropic lands for waking dreams!
There time and life move lazily along.
There by the banks of blue-and-silver streams … Continue Reading …

O Word I Love To Sing
O word I love to sing! thou art too tender
For all the passions agitating me;
For all my bitterness thou art too tender, … Continue Reading …

On Broadway
About me young and careless feet
Linger along the garish street;
Above, a hundred shouting signs … Continue Reading …

On A Primitive Canoe
Here, passing lonely down this quiet lane,
Before a mud-splashed window long I pause
To gaze and gaze, while through my active brain … Continue Reading …

On The Road
Roar of the rushing train fearfully rocking,
Impatient people jammed in line for food,
The rasping noise of cars together knocking, … Continue Reading …

One Year After
Not once in all our days of poignant love,
Did I a single instant give to thee
My undivided being wholly free. … Continue Reading …

Outcast
For the dim regions whence my fathers came
My spirit, bondaged by the body, longs.
Words felt, but never heard, my lips would frame; … Continue Reading …

Poetry
Sometimes I tremble like a storm-swept flower,
And seek to hide my tortured soul from thee.
Bowing my head in deep humility … Continue Reading …

Polarity
Nay, why reproach each other, be unkind,
For there’s no plane on which we two may meet?
Let’s both forgive, forget, for both were blind, … Continue Reading …

Rest In Peace
No more for you the city’s thorny ways,
The ugly corners of the Negro belt;
The miseries and pains of these harsh days … Continue Reading …

Romance
To clasp you now and feel your head close-pressed,
Scented and warm against my beating breast; … Continue Reading …

Spring In New Hampshire
Too green the springing April grass,
Too blue the silver-speckled sky,
For me to linger here, alas, … Continue Reading …

Subway Wind
Far down, down through the city’s great, gaunt gut
The gray train rushing bears the weary wind;
In the packed cars the fans the crowd’s breath cut, … Continue Reading …

Summer Morn In New Hampshire
All yesterday it poured, and all night long
I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat
Upon the shingled roof like a weird song, … Continue Reading …

The Barrier
I must not gaze at them although
Your eyes are dawning day;
I must not watch you as you go … Continue Reading …

The Castaways
The vivid grass with visible delight
Springing triumphant from the pregnant earth,
The butterflies, and sparrows in brief flight … Continue Reading …

The City’s Love
For one brief golden moment rare like wine,
The gracious city swept across the line;
Oblivious of the color of my skin, … Continue Reading …

The Easter Flower
Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,
Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily … Continue Reading …

The Harlem Dancer
Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes
And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway;
Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes … Continue Reading …

The Lynching
His Spirit in smoke ascended to high heaven.
His father, by the cruelest way of pain,
Had bidden him to his bosom once again; … Continue Reading …

The Night Fire
No engines shrieking rescue storm the night,
And hose and hydrant cannot here avail;
The flames laugh high and fling their challenging light, … Continue Reading …

The Plateau
It was the silver, heart-enveloping view
Of the mysterious sea-line far away,
Seen only on a gleaming gold-white day, … Continue Reading …

The Snow Fairy
Throughout the afternoon I watched them there,
Snow-fairies falling, falling from the sky,
Whirling fantastic in the misty air, … Continue Reading …

The Spanish Needle
Lovely dainty Spanish needle
With your yellow flower and white,
Dew bedecked and softly sleeping, … Continue Reading …

The Tired Worker
O whisper, O my soul! The afternoon
Is waning into evening, whisper soft!
Peace, O my rebel heart! for soon the moon … Continue Reading …

The Tropics In New York
Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root,
Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,
And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit, … Continue Reading …

The White City
I will not toy with it nor bend an inch.
Deep in the secret chambers of my heart
I muse my life-long hate, and without flinch … Continue Reading …

The Wild Goat
O you would clothe me in silken frocks
And house me from the cold,
And bind with bright bands my glossy locks, … Continue Reading …

Thirst
My spirit wails for water, water now!
My tongue is aching dry, my throat is hot
For water, fresh rain shaken from a bough, … Continue Reading …

Through Agony
All night, through the eternity of night,
Pain was my portion though I could not feel.
Deep in my humbled heart you ground your heel, … Continue Reading …

To A Poet
There is a lovely noise about your name,
Above the shoutings of the city clear,
More than a moment’s merriment, whose claim … Continue Reading …

To O. E. A.
Your voice is the color of a robin’s breast,
And there’s a sweet sob in it like rain—still rain in the night.
Among the leaves of the trumpet-tree, close to his nest, … Continue Reading …

To One Coming North
At first you’ll joy to see the playful snow,
Like white moths trembling on the tropic air,
Or waters of the hills that softly flow … Continue Reading …

To Winter
Stay, season of calm love and soulful snows!
There is a subtle sweetness in the sun,
The ripples on the stream’s breast gaily run, … Continue Reading …

Tormented
I will not reason, wrestle here with you,
Though you pursue and worry me about;
As well put forth my swarthy arm to stop … Continue Reading …

When Dawn Comes To The City
The tired cars go grumbling by,
The moaning, groaning cars,
And the old milk carts go rumbling by … Continue Reading …

When I Have Passed Away
When I have passed away and am forgotten,
And no one living can recall my face,
When under alien sod my bones lie rotten … Continue Reading …

Wild May
Aleta mentions in her tender letters,
Among a chain of quaint and touching things,
That you are feeble, weighted down with fetters, … Continue Reading …

Winter In The Country
Sweet life! how lovely to be here
And feel the soft sea-laden breeze
Strike my flushed face, the spruce’s fair … Continue Reading …

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American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Claude McKay – Poems by Claude McKay