Love in a world of words,
Child of Africa,
Is yours, so black
When the wind bites your lips
Playfully,
A little by the golden boughs
Dripping with marigold scents,
Hanging with the first ripe
Blossoms of fruit, the season's.

O would that her hair
Fell down twilight in such
Rope! Would that her chasm eyes
Swallowed me! You know me,
Traveler, and you know what I want.

Little black boy,
Little child of Africa,
You are so sad. Conversations
Carried in libraries,
Through ember computer
Terminals are nothing of harvest.
Aren't the people singing there?
Don't the women gather up,
In thick limbs,
Wonderful juice staining,
Skin-seeping peaches?
Don't the men lift up full heaps
Of grain with muscular arms?

When she's dancing
She doesn't notice me. You
Awkward the streets of Portland
With caramel shudders at every flesh --
How you could kiss them
For the cream of her lips!

There is no harvest then?

Oh only the weeds have harvests
And the dark storm seasons,
Amid the black inkwells of stars.