Copyright © 1971 by Maya Angelou

All rights reserved under International

and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States by

Random House, Inc., New York,

and simultaneously in Canada

by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

The following poems were first published in

The Poetry of Maya Angelou and are reprinted

by permission of Hirt Music Inc.

Copyright © 1969 by Hirt Music Inc.:

“They Went Home,” “The Gamut,”

“To a Man,” “No Loser, No Weeper,”

“When You Come to Me, “Remembering,”

“In a Time,” “Tears,” “The Detached,”

“To a Husband,” “Accident,” “Let’s

Majeste” or the “Ego and I,”

“On Diverse Deviations,” “Mourning Grace,”

“Sounds Like Pearls,” “When I Think

About Myself,” “Letter to an Aspiring

Junkie,” “Miss Scarlett, Mr. Rhett & Other

Latter-Day Saints,” “Faces,” “To a Freedom

Fighter,” “Riot: 60’s,” “No No No No,”

“Black Ode,” “My Guilt,” “The Calling of

Names,” “On Working White Liberals,”

“Sepia Fashion Show,” “The Thirteens

(Black),” “The Thirteens (White),”

“Harlem Hopscotch.”

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 70-156964

eISBN: 978-0-307-83327-3

Random House Website address:

http://www.randomhouse.com/

v3.1

To AMBER SAM

and the ZORRO MAN

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PART ONE

Where Love Is a Scream of Anguish

They Went Home

The Gamut

A Zorro Man

To a Man

Late October

No Loser, No Weeper

When You Come to Me

Remembering

In a Time

Tears

The Detached

To a Husband

Accident

Let’s Majeste

After

The Mothering Blackness

On Diverse Deviations

Mourning Grace

How I Can Lie to You

Sounds Like Pearls

PART TWO

Just Before the World Ends

When I Think About Myself

On a Bright Day, Next Week

Letter to an Aspiring Junkie

Miss Scarlett, Mr. Rhett and Other Latter-Day Saints

Times-Square-Shoeshine-Composition

Faces

To a Freedom Fighter

Riot: 60’s

We Saw Beyond Our Seeming

Black Ode

No No No No

My Guilt

The Calling of Names

On Working White Liberals

Sepia Fashion Show

The Thirteens (Black)

The Thirteens (White)

Harlem Hopscotch

Other Books by This Author

About the Author

PART ONE

Where Love Is a Scream of Anguish

They Went Home

They went home and told their wives,

that never once in all their lives,

had they known a girl like me,

But … They went home.

They said my house was licking clean,

no word I spoke was ever mean,

I had an air of mystery,

But … They went home.

My praises were on all men’s lips,

they liked my smile, my wit, my hips,

they’d spend one night, or two or three.

But …

The Gamut

Soft you day, be velvet soft,

My true love approaches,

Look you bright, you dusty sun,

Array your golden coaches.

Soft you wind, be soft as silk

My true love is speaking.

Hold you birds, your silver throats,

His golden voice I’m seeking.

Come you death, in haste, do come

My shroud of black be weaving,

Quiet my heart, be deathly quiet,

My true love is leaving.

A Zorro Man

Here

in the wombed room

silk purple drapes

flash a light as subtle

as your hands before

love-making

Here

in the covered lens

I catch a

clitoral image of

your general inhabitation

long and like a

late dawn in winter

Here

this clean mirror

traps me unwilling

in a gone time

when I was love

and you were booted and brave

and trembling for me.

To a Man

My man is

Black Golden Amber

Changing.

Warm mouths of Brandy Fine

Cautious sunlight on a patterned rug

Coughing laughter, rocked on a whorl of French tobacco

Graceful turns on woolen stilts

Secretive?

A cat’s eye.

Southern. Plump and tender with navy bean sullenness

And did I say “Tender”?

The gentleness

A big cat stalks through stubborn bush

And did I mention “Amber”?

The heatless fire consuming itself.

Again. Anew. Into ever neverlessness.

My man is Amber

Changing

Always into itself

New. Now New.

Still itself.

Still.

Late October

Carefully

the leaves of autumn

sprinkle down the tinny

sound of little dyings

and skies sated

of ruddy sunsets

of roseate dawns

roil ceaselessly in

cobweb greys and turn

to black

for comfort.

Only lovers

see the fall

a signal end to endings

a gruffish gesture alerting

those who will not be alarmed

that we begin to stop

in order simply

to begin

again.

No Loser, No Weeper

“I hate to lose something,”

then she bent her head

“even a dime, I wish I was dead.

I can’t explain it. No more to be said.

Cept I hate to lose something.”

“I lost a doll once and cried for a week.

She could open her eyes, and do all but speak.

I believe she was took, by some doll-snatching-sneak

I tell you, I hate to lose something.”

“A watch of mine once, got up and walked away.

It had twelve numbers on it and for the time of day.

I’ll never forget it and all I can say

Is I really hate to lose something.”

“Now if I felt that way bout a watch and a toy,

What you think I feel bout my lover-boy?

I ain’t threatening you madam, but he is my evening’s joy.

And I mean I really hate to lose something.”

When You Come to Me

When you come to me, unbidden,

Beckoning me

To long-ago rooms,

Where memories lie.

Offering me, as to a child, an attic,

Gatherings of days too few.

Baubles of stolen kisses.

Trinkets of borrowed loves.

Trunks of secret words,

I CRY.

Remembering

Soft grey ghosts crawl up my sleeve

to peer into my eyes

while I within deny their threats

and answer them with lies.

Mushlike memories perform

a ritual on my lips

I lie in stolid hopelessness

and they lay my soul in strips.

In a Time

In a time of secret wooing

Today prepares tomorrow’s ruin

Left knows not what right is doing

My heart is torn asunder.

In a time of furtive sighs

Sweet hellos and sad goodbyes

Half-truths told and entire lies

My conscience echoes thunder

In a time when kingdoms come

Joy is brief as summer’s fun

Happiness, its race has run

Then pain stalks in to plunder.

Tears

Tears

The crystal rags

Viscous tatters

of a worn-through soul

Moans

Deep swan song

Blue farewell

of a dying dream.

The Detached

We die,

Welcoming Bluebeards to our darkening closets,

Stranglers to our outstretched necks.

Stranglers, who neither care nor

care to know that

DEATH IS INTERNAL.

We pray,

Savoring sweet the teethed lies,

Bellying the grounds before alien gods

Gods, who neither know nor

wish to know that

HELL IS INTERNAL.

We love,

Rubbing the nakednesses with gloved hands

Inverting our mouths in tongued kisses,

Kisses that neither touch nor

care to touch if

LOVE IS INTERNAL.

To a Husband

Your voice at times a fist

Tight in your throat

Jabs ceaselessly at phantoms

In the room,

Your hand a carved and

skimming boat

Goes down the Nile

To point out Pharoah’s tomb.

You’re Africa to me

At brightest dawn.

The Congo’s green and

Copper’s brackish hue,

A continent to build

With Black Man’s brawn.

I sit at home and see it all

Through you.

Accident

tonight

when you spread your pallet

of magic,

I escaped.

sitting apart,

I saw you grim and unkempt.

Your vulgar-ness

not of living

your demands

not from need.

tonight

as you sprinkled your brain-dust

of rainbows,

I had no eyes.

Seeing all

I saw the colors fade

and change.

The blood, red dulled

through the dyes,

and the naked

Black-White truth.

Let’s Majeste

I sit a throne upon the times

when Kings are rare and

Consorts

slide into the grease of scullery maids.

So gaily wave a crown of light

(astride the royal chair) that blinds

the commoners who genuflect and cross their fingers.

The years will lie beside me

on the queenly bed.

And coupled we’ll await

the ages’ dust to cake my lids again.

And when the rousing kiss is given,

why must it always be a fairy, and

only just a Prince?

After

No sound falls

from the moaning sky

No scowl wrinkles

the evening pool

The stars lean down

A stony brilliance

While birds fly

The market leers

its empty shelves

Streets bare bosoms

to scanty cars

This bed yawns

beneath the weight

of our absent selves.

The Mothering Blackness

She came home running

back to the mothering blackness

deep in the smothering blackness

white tears icicle gold plains of her face

She came home running

She came down creeping

here to the black arms waiting

now to the warm heart waiting

rime of alien dreams befrost her rich brown face

She came down creeping

She came home blameless

black yet as Hagar’s daughter

tall as was Sheba’s daughter

threats of northern winds die on the desert’s face

She came home blameless

On Diverse Deviations

When love is a shimmering curtain

Before a door of chance

That leads to a world in question

Wherein the macabrous dance

Of bones that rattle in silence

Of blinded eyes and rolls

Of thick lips thin, denying

A thousand powdered moles,

Where touch to touch is feel

And life a weary whore

I would be carried off, not gently

To a shore,

Where love is the scream of anguish

And no curtain drapes the door.

Mourning Grace

If today, I follow death

go down its trackless wastes,

salt my tongue on hardened tears

for my precious dear times waste

race

along that promised cave in a headlong

deadlong

haste,

Will you

have

the

grace

to mourn for

me?

How I Can Lie to You

now thread my voice

with lies

of lightness

force within

my mirror eyes

the cold disguise

of sad and wise

decisions.

Sounds Like Pearls

Sounds

Like pearls

Roll off your tongue

To grace this eager ebon ear.

Doubt and fear,

Ungainly things,

With blushings

Disappear.

PART TWO

Just Before the World Ends

When I Think About Myself

When I think about myself,

I almost laugh myself to death,

My life has been one great big joke,

A dance that’s walked

A song that’s spoke,

I laugh so hard I almost choke

When I think about myself.

Sixty years in these folks’ world

The child I works for calls me girl

I say “Yes ma’am” for working’s sake.

Too proud to bend

Too poor to break,

I laugh until my stomach ache,

When I think about myself.

My folks can make me split my side,

I laughed so hard I nearly died,

The tales they tell, sound just like lying,

They grow the fruit,

But eat the rind,

I laugh until I start to crying,

When I think about my folks.

On a Bright Day, Next Week

On a bright day, next week

Just before the bomb falls

Just before the world ends,

Just before I die

All my tears will powder

Black in dust like ashes

Black like Buddha’s belly

Black and hot and dry

Then will mercy tumble

Falling down in godheads

Falling on the children

Falling from the sky

Letter to an Aspiring Junkie

Let me hip you to the streets,

Jim,

Ain’t nothing happening.

Maybe some tomorrows gone up in smoke,

raggedy preachers, telling a joke

to lonely, son-less old ladies’ maids.

Nothing happening,

Nothing shakin’, Jim.

A slough of young cats riding that

cold, white horse,

a grey old monkey on their back, of course

does rodeo tricks.

No haps, man.

No haps.

A worn-out pimp, with a space-age conk,

setting up some fool for a game of tonk,

or poker or

get ’em dead and alive.

The streets?

Climb into the streets man, like you climb

into the ass end of a lion.

Then it’s fine.

It’s a bug-a-loo and a shing-a-ling,

African dreams on a buck-and-a-wing and a prayer.

That’s the streets man,

Nothing happening.

Miss Scarlett, Mr. Rhett and Other Latter-Day Saints

Novitiates sing Ave

Before the whipping posts,

Criss-crossing their breasts and

tear-stained robes

in the yielding dark.

Animated by the human sacrifice

(Golgotha in black-face)

Priests glow purely white on the

bar-relief of a plantation shrine.

(O Sing)

You are gone but not forgotten

Hail, Scarlett. Requiescat in pace.

God-Makers smear brushes in

blood/gall

to etch frescoes on your

ceilinged tomb.

(O Sing)

Hosanna, King Kotton.

Shadowed couplings of infidels

tempt stigmata from the nipples

of your true-believers.

(Chant Maternoster)

Hallowed Little Eva.

Ministers make novena with the

charred bones of four

very small

very black

very young children

(Intone DIXIE)

And guard the relics

of your intact hymen

daily putting to death,

into eternity,

The stud, his seed,

His seed

His seed.

(O Sing)

Hallelujah, pure Scarlett

Blessed Rhett, the Martyr.

Times-Square-Shoeshine-Composition

I’m the best that ever done it

(pow pow)

that’s my title and I won it

(pow pow)

I ain’t lying, I’m the best

(pow pow)

Come and put me to the test

(pow pow)

I’ll clean ’em til they squeak

(pow pow)

In the middle of next week,

(pow pow)

I’ll shine ’em til they whine

(pow pow)

Till they call me master mine

(pow pow)

For a quarter and a dime

(pow pow)

You can get the dee luxe shine

(pow pow)

Say you wanta pay a quarter?

(pow pow)

Then you give that to your daughter

(pow pow)

I ain’t playing dozens mister

(pow pow)

You can give it to your sister

(pow pow)

Any way you want to read it

(pow pow)

Maybe it’s your momma need it.

(pow pow)

Say I’m like a greedy bigot,

(pow pow)

I’m a cap’tilist, can you dig it?

(pow pow)

Faces

Faces and more remember

then reject

the brown caramel days of youth

Reject the sun-sucked tit of

childhood mornings.

Poke a muzzle of war in the trust frozen eyes

of a favored doll

Breathe, Brother

and displace a moment’s hate with organized love.

A poet screams “CHRIST WAITS AT THE SUBWAY!”

But who sees?

To a Freedom Fighter

You drink a bitter draught.

I sip the tears your eyes fight to hold

A cup of lees, of henbane steeped in chaff.

Your breast is hot,

Your anger black and cold,

Through evening’s rest, you dream

I hear the moans, you die a thousands’ death.

When cane straps flog the body

dark and lean, you feel the blow,

I hear it in your breath.

Riot: 60’s

Our

YOUR FRIEND CHARLIE pawnshop

was a glorious blaze

I heard the flames lick

then eat the trays

of zircons

mounted in red gold alloys

Easter clothes and stolen furs

burned in the attic

radios and teevees

crackled with static

plugged in

only to a racial outlet

Some

thought the FRIENDLY FINANCE FURNITURE CO.

burned higher

When a leopard print sofa with gold legs

(which makes into a bed)

caught fire

an admiring groan from the waiting horde

“Absentee landlord

you got that shit”

Lighting: a hundred Watts

Detroit, Newark and New York

Screeching nerves, exploding minds

lives tied to

a policeman’s whistle

a welfare worker’s doorbell

finger.

Hospitality, southern-style

corn pone grits and you-all smile

whole blocks novae

brand new stars

policemen caught in their

brand new cars

Chugga chugga chigga

git me one nigga

lootin’ n burnin’

he wont git far

Watermelons, summer ripe

grey neck bones and boiling tripe

supermarket roastin like the

noon-day sun

national guard nervous with his shiny gun

goose the motor quicker

here’s my nigga picka

shoot him in the belly

shoot him while he run.

We Saw Beyond Our Seeming

We saw beyond our seeming

These days of bloodied screaming

Of children dying bloated

Out where the lilies floated

Of men all noosed and dangling

Within the temples strangling

Our guilt     grey fungus growing

We knew and lied our knowing

Deafened and unwilling

We aided in the killing

And now our souls lie broken

Dry tablets without token.

Black Ode

Your beauty is a thunder

and I am set a wandering—a wandering

Deafened

Down twilight tin-can alleys

And moist sounds

“OOo wee Baby, Look what you could get if your name

was Willie”

Oh, to dip your words like snuff.

A laughter, black and streaming

And I am come a being—a being

Rounded

Up Baptist, aisles, so moaning

And moist sounds

“Bless her heart. Take your bed and walk.

You been heavy burdened”

Oh, to lick your love like tears.

No No No No

No

the two legg’d beasts

that walk like men

play stink finger in their crusty asses

while crackling babies

in napalm coats

stretch mouths to receive

burning tears

on splitting tongues

JUST GIVE ME A COOL DRINK OF WATER ’FORE I DIIIE

No

the gap legg’d whore

of the eastern shore

enticing Europe to COME

in her

and turns her pigeon shit back to me

to me

Who stoked the coal that drove the ships

which brought her over the sinuous cemetery

Of my many brothers

No

the cocktailed after noons

of what can I do.

In my white layed pink world

I’ve let your men cram my mouth

with their black throbbing hate

and I swallowed after

I’ve let your mammies

steal from my kitchens

(I was always half-amused)

I’ve chuckled the chins of

your topsy-haired pickaninnies.

What more can I do?

I’ll never be black like you.

(HALLELUJAH)

No

the red-shoed priests riding

palanquined

in barefoot children country.

the plastered saints gazing down

beneficently

on kneeling mothers

picking undigested beans

from yesterday’s shit.

I have waited

toes curled, hat rolled

heart and genitals

in hand

on the back porches

of forever

in the kitchens and fields

of rejections

on the cold marble steps

of America’s White Out-House

in the drop seats of buses

and the open flies of war

No more

the dream that you

will cease haunting me

down in fetid swamps of fear

and will turn to embrace your own

humanity

which I AM

No more

The hope that

the razored insults

which mercury slide over your tongue

will be forgotten

and you will learn the words of love

Mother Brother Father Sister Lover Friend

My hopes

dying slowly

rose petals falling

beneath an autumn red moon

will not adorn your unmarked graves

My dreams

lying quietly

a dark pool under the trees

will not carry your name

to a forgetful shore

And what a pity

What a pity

That pity has folded in upon itself

an old man’s mouth

whose teeth are gone

and I have no pity.

My Guilt

My guilt is “slavery’s chains,” too long

the clang of iron falls down the years.

This brother’s sold. This sister’s gone

is bitter wax, lining my ears.

My guilt made music with the tears.

My crime is “heroes, dead and gone”

dead Vesey, Turner, Gabriel,

dead Malcolm, Marcus, Martin King.

They fought too hard, they loved too well.

My crime is I’m alive to tell.

My sin is “hanging from a tree”

I do not scream, it makes me proud.

I take to dying like a man.

I do it to impress the crowd.

My sin lies in not screaming loud.

The Calling of Names

He went to being called a Colored man

after answering to “hey nigger,”

Now that’s a big jump,

anyway you figger,

Hey, Baby, Watch my smoke.

From colored man to Negro

With the N in caps,

was like saying Japanese

instead of saying Japs.

I mean, during the war.

The next big step

was a change for true,

From Negro in caps

to being a Jew.

Now, Sing Yiddish Mama.

Light, Yellow, Brown

and Dark brown skin,

were o.k. colors to

describe him then,

He was a Bouquet of Roses.

He changed his seasons

like an almanac,

Now you’ll get hurt

if you don’t call him “Black.”

Nigguh, I ain’t playin’ this time.

On Working White Liberals

I don’t ask the Foreign Legion

Or anyone to win my freedom

Or to fight my battle better than I can,

Though there’s one thing that I cry for

I believe enough to die for

That is every man’s responsibility to man.

I’m afraid they’ll have to prove first

that they’ll watch the Black man move first

Then follow him with faith to kingdom come,

This rocky road is not paved for us,

So, I’ll believe in Liberal’s aid for us

When I see a white man load a Black man’s gun.

Sepia Fashion Show

Their hair, pomaded, faces jaded

bones protruding, hip-wise,

The models strutted, backed and butted,

Then stuck their mouths out, lip-wise.

They’d nasty manners, held like banners,

while they looked down their nose-wise,

I’d see ’em in hell, before they’d sell

me one thing they’re wearing, clothes-wise.

The Black Bourgeois, who all say “yah”

When yeah is what they’re meaning

Should look around, both up and down

before they set out preening.

“Indeed” they swear, “that’s what I’ll wear

When I go country-clubbing,”

I’d remind them please, look at those knees

you got a Miss Ann’s scrubbing.

The Thirteens (Black)

Your Momma took to shouting

Your Poppa’s gone to war,

Your sister’s in the streets

Your brother’s in the bar,

The thirteens. Right On.

Your cousin’s taking smack

Your Uncle’s in the joint,

Your buddy’s in the gutter

Shooting for his point

The thirteens. Right on.

And you, you make me sorry

You out here by yourself,

I’d call you something dirty,

But there just ain’t nothing left,

cept

The thirteens. Right On.

The Thirteens (White)

Your Momma kissed the chauffeur,

Your Poppa balled the cook,

Your sister did the dirty,

in the middle of the book,

The thirteens. Right On.

Your daughter wears a jock strap,

Your son he wears a bra

Your brother jonesed your cousin

in the back seat of the car.

The thirteens. Right On.

Your money thinks you’re something

But if I’d learned to curse,

I’d tell you what your name is

But there just ain’t nothing worse

than

The thirteens. Right On.

Harlem Hopscotch

One foot down, then hop! It’s hot.

Good things for the ones that’s got.

Another jump, now to the left.

Everybody for hisself.

In the air, now both feet down.

Since you black, don’t stick around.

Food is gone, the rent is due,

Curse and cry and then jump two.

All the people out of work,

Hold for three, then twist and jerk.

Cross the line, they count you out.

That’s what hopping’s all about.

Both feet flat, the game is done.

They think I lost. I think I won.

Also by Maya Angelou

And Still I Rise

Gather Together in My Name

The Heart of a Woman

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well

Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas

Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing?

All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes

I Shall Not Be Moved

On the Pulse of Morning

Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now

The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou

Phenomenal Woman

A Brave and Startling Truth

About the Author

Maya Angelou, author of the best-selling I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, and The Heart of a Woman, has also written five collections of poetry: Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie; Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well; And Still I Rise; Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing?; and I Shall Not Be Moved; as well as On the Pulse of Morning, which was read by her at the inauguration of President William Jefferson Clinton on January 20, 1993. In theater, she produced, directed, and starred in Cabaret for Freedom in collaboration with Godfrey Cambridge at New York’s Village Gate, starred in Genet’s The Blacks at the St. Mark’s Playhouse, and adapted Sophocles ’ Ajax, which premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 1974. She wrote the original screenplay and musical score for the film Georgia, Georgia and wrote and produced a ten-part TV series on African traditions in American life. In the sixties, at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., she became the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and in 1975 she received the Ladies’ Home Journal Woman of the Year Award in communications. She has received numerous honorary degrees and was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year and by President Gerald R. Ford to the American Revolution Bicentennial Advisory Council. She is on the board of trustees of the American Film Institute. One of the few female members of the Directors Guild, Angelou is the author of the television screenplays I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Sisters. Most recently, she wrote the lyrics for the musical King: Drum Major for Love and was both host and writer for the series of documentaries Maya Angelou’s America: A Journey of the Heart, along with Guy Johnson. Angelou is currently Reynolds Professor at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.