Love

To O.E.A.

by Claude McKay 1889–1948

From Harlem Shadows

Love

Your voice is the color of a robin’s breast,
And there’s a sweet sob in it like rain--still rain in the night.
Among the leaves of the trumpet-tree, close to his nest,
The pea-dove sings, and each note thrills me with strange delight
Like the words, wet with music, that well from your trembling throat.
I’m afraid of your eyes, they’re so bold,
Searching me through, reading my thoughts, shining like gold.
But sometimes they are gentle and soft like the dew on
the lips of the eucharis
Before the sun comes warm with his lover’s kiss.
You are sea-foam, pure with the star’s loveliness,
Not mortal, a flower, a fairy, too fair for the beauty-shorn earth.
All wonderful things, all beautiful things, gave of their
wealth to your birth.
Oh I love you so much, not recking of passion, that I feel it is wrong!
But men will love you, flower, fairy, non-mortal spirit
burdened with flesh,
Forever, life-long.

MLA

McKay, Claude. “To O.E.A.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/mckay/57/.

Chicago

McKay, Claude. “To O.E.A.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/mckay/57/.

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