Poems by Claude McKay

Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root,
Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,
And tangerines a...

When I have passed away and am forgotten,
And no one living can recall my face,
When under al...

Aleta mentions in her tender letters,
Among a chain of quaint and touching things,
That you a...

Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,
W...

The sun sought thy dim bed and brought forth light,
The sciences were sucklings at thy breast; ...

Some day, when trees have shed their leaves
And against the morning's white
The shivering bird...

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Steali...

Into the furnace let me go alone;
Stay you without in terror of the heat.
I will go naked in--...

I must not gaze at them although
Your eyes are dawning day;
I must not watch you as you go
Yo...

Their shadow dims the sunshine of our day,
As they go lumbering across the sky,
Squawking in ...

O lonely heart so timid of approach,
Like the shy tropic flower that shuts its lips
To the fai...

The Dawn! The Dawn! The crimson-tinted comes
Out of the low still skies, over the hills,
Manh...

Your words dropped into my heart like pebbles into a pool,
Rippling around my breast and leavin...

Oh when I think of my long-suffering race,
For weary centuries despised, oppressed,
Enslaved...

Upon thy purple mat thy body bare
Is fine and limber like a tender tree.
The motion of thy supp...