There are old women here among these island homes,
With dull brown eyes that look at something gray,
And tight silver hair, drawn back in lines,
Like the beach grass that's always blown one way;
With such a melancholy in their faces
I know that they have lived long in these places.
The tides, the hooting owls, the daylight moons,
The leprous lights and shadows of the mosses,
The funereal woodlands of these coasts,
Draped like a perpetual hearse,
And memories of an old war's ancient losses,
Dwell in their faces' shadows like gray ghosts.
And worse--
The terror of the black man always near--
The drab level of the ricefields and the marsh
Lends them a mask of fear.
PAGE TWO
SUNSHINE
This is a different page.
Do you suppose the sun here lavishes his heat
For nothing, in these islands by the sea?
No! The great green-mottled melons ripen in the fields,
Bleeding with scarlet, juicy pith deliriously;
And the exuberant yams grow golden, thick and sweet;
And white potatoes, in grave-rows,
With leaves as rough as cat tongues;
And pearly onions, and cabbages
With white flesh, sweet as chicken meat.
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