Black History Month: Love Poems for the Belovéd; for God; for a Child

Eric Merton Roach (1915-1974, Trinidad and Tobago)
A Lover Speaks (1948)
.
Climb up a rainbow’s arch
And be arrayed in all that loveliness;
Be gilded as a sunset cloud
Or take the moon’s soft radiance for gown
And the great stars for diamonds,
Be costumed like a queen in cloth of gold
And all the earth’s rare and famous finery,
Be what you will for I am fancy free.
.
Become all legend beauty,
The glorious goddess from Olympus leaping,
Contested Helen or the Pharaoh queen,
Isolde or Deidre,
All that fair company that pass
In love and sorrow down the corridors
Of rhyme and story.
Be what you will for I am fancy free.
.
But, when your bright imaginings shall end
And you are your black hair,
Black eyes, deep lips and dark complexion;
When you are native to this time and island,
Attractive in the streets and gay and graceful,
Your beauty maddening in the moment’s dusk,
Your Naiad nakedness in the clean sea;
When you are you
Then shall my fancy not be free
But slave and bound to what I love to see.
. . .
Eric Merton Roach
Song
.
Buy her wine and roses,
gladden her laughter,
tell her she’s legend
like Ledas daughter,
a boldly made beauty
aching the eye, Isis, Astarte.
.
But never ask her
of hearts that keep honour,
puritan modes,
ethics and codes.
Cords that should bind her
to one bed
crumble in
her passionate blood.
.
To the body only
that ripe beauty,
golden as honey
hum your canzone.
. . .

R. L. C. McFarlane (born 1925, Jamaica)
O Girl, How Should I Tell You
.
O girl, how should I tell you how
You shatter all philosophy,
And melt the hardened theory,
And lay the walls of reason low?
.
For so I yield within an hour
The strength that I had wrought with pain,
And am become a fool again,
Colonial to an alien power,
.
Seeking the furtherance of my being
Within another’s happiness;
Enwombed in utter helplessness
– Blank days that jump the time for freeing.
.
No, stand apart and keep your state
Free of my tribute, lest we prove
How in the curious knot of love
The mind conceals a knife of hate.
. . .
Mervyn Morris (born 1937, Jamaica)
Love-Story
.
Love gave her eyes:
the tough man snatched,
locked them up tight.
.
Love gave her hand:
the tough man tickled it
early one night.
.
Love gave her tongue:
the tough man found
it tasted right.
.
Love gave her body:
the tough man smiled,
switched off the light.
.
Love gave her heart:
the tough man fled,
flaccid with fright.
. . .
Esther Phillips (born 1950, Barbados)
Guilt
.
Between the silent Seraphim,
Wings overarching me,
I kneel before Your Mercy Seat.
.
Oh, do not speak, I fear
Your anger; I cannot bear
The censure in Your voice.
.
Commune with me,
Your great Heart to
My trembling heart.
.
Feel my love torn,
The greater portion Yours
And still shall always be.
.
The rest is his, and he
And I are flesh – eyes, lips,
Hands and thighs, and sweetness.
.
Do not forsake me,
Oh, do not cast me off!
Was it for love You died
That I might live
– And love?
. . .
Esther Phillips
Night Errant
.
You hate the ignoble
thing, the unworthy.
You believe man is
the measure (despite
your brilliance.)
So when the wolf rips
the night open,
the night you had so drawn
with soft colours,
you deny, you deny,
you deny.
And the creature,
on cue, disappears;
the air, snarled, lies
heavy between us.
.
I’ve not much use
for a cerebral-shaped heart
nurtured on some one-eyed
philosophy.
.
Love me with your own
heart hoarding the traitor,
the rough rage, your un-
certain compassion.
. . .
Kendel Hippolyte (born 1952, Saint Lucia)
Mamoyi
.
The child is sleeping,
folded in among the brown boughs of my arms,
and a promise, formed beyond language, drawn upward
like sap through a pith, stirs through me.
In its slow course, I feel a vow so deep
it does not reach the flower and fade of word
but leaves me steeped, resined, in its truth.
Because I wish this child, awake, a man,
to know that he can keep, lifelong,
the trust, the self-astonishing joy that he has now
and he can draw from them the strength to make
his true path from the place I am
to where he will become, for his own child, a tree,
I vow: these boughs will never break.
. . .
Margaret D. Gill (born 1953, Barbados)
I want to make you cry tonight
.
I want to make you
cry tonight
I want to shake you
and break you
and take you apart and then –
want to create you
tonight
.
To begin you
And sing you
And bring you
to
where
(if you care to)
They say heaven is
heaven is
heaven is.
.
I want to make you
cry tonight
Like a big ole man child.
Shall I liberate you from all that holding in and
holding on and
self sufficient?
I may not succeed now! But
I shall certainly try –
cry
cry, cry
cry (it’s good for you).

. . .
Gladys Waterberg (born 1959, Surinam)
Poem
.
Never before
the past
has been
such a
great future dream
than
when I met you
the first time
and wished
that the future
would never
become part
of the past.

. . .
More Love Poems at ZP:

“And Don’t Think I Won’t Be Waiting”: Love poems by Audre Lorde

.

Melvin Dixon as translator: a handful of “love letter” poems by Léopold Sédar Senghor

.

“Baby, I’m for real”: Black-American Gay poets from a generation ago

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