Negro girl, -- tall, dusky-skinned Diana, Molded in gleaming, darksome symmetry, Full-hipped, full-bosomed, lithe of limb, and straight As a young tree is straight, why do you seek To hide, with a white woman's paints and dyes, Your strange and natural beauty? Who has said You have not loveliness? Who judged your race And found it lacking? We who brought you here, Unsprung as yet from those black, tortured folk, Who in long, stumbling, sobbing, writhing chains, Bound one unto the other, whipped and lashed, Were dragged from out their jungle! What dark fires Burn yet within you? What strange, thwarted dreams Have passed, dark mother to dark daughter, till, Unchanged by years, your own breast hoards them now? What vast wrong have we done you that, today, Free, you are yet our slaves? On every hand We hurt you, tramp you, -- choosing not to see The groping soul of your perverted race Lying upon our hands. That injury May never now be righted. . . Negro girl, Do flimsy, silken garments light your eyes? Do paints and powders make you better reach The realm of your white sister? And, I muse, Ignorant, are you happy? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...WHEN I RISE UP by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON DE LITTLE PICKANINNY'S GONE TO SLEEP by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON IN 'DESIGNING A CLOAK TO CLOAK HIS DESIGNS' YOU WRESTED FROM OBLIVION by MARIANNE MOORE WITH BEST WISHES by DOROTHY PARKER THE FIVE STUDENTS by THOMAS HARDY MONNA INNOMINATA, A SONNET OF SONNETS: 11 by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI |