Brooks - A Street in Bronzeville

THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA Volume compilation copyright 2014 by Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., New York, N.Y. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced commercially by offset-lithographic or equivalent copying devices without the permission of the publisher. www.loa.org Copyright 1945 by Gwendolyn Brooks Blakely. Copyright 2003 by Nora Brooks Blakely. For permissions, write to Brooks Permissions, P.O.

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But in the crowding darkness not a word did they say.

Though the pretty-coated birds had piped so lightly all the day. And he had seen the lovers in the little side-streets. And she had heard the morning stories clogged with sweets. It was quite a time for loving. It was midnight. It was May.

But in the crowding darkness not a word did they say.

We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan, Grayed in, and gray. Dream makes a giddy sound, not strong Like rent, feeding a wife, satisfying a man. But could a dream send up through onion fumes Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes And yesterdays garbage ripening in the hall, Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms Even if we were willing to let it in, Had time to warm it, keep it very clean, Anticipate a message, let it begin? We wonder. But not well! not for a minute! Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now, We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it. Abortions will not let you forget.

You remember the children you got that you did not get, The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair, The singers and workers that never handled the air. You will never neglect or beat Them, or silence or buy with a sweet. You will never wind up the sucking-thumb Or scuttle off ghosts that come. You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh, Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye. I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children. I have contracted.

I have eased My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck. I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized Your luck And your lives from your unfinished reach, If I stole your births and your names, Your straight baby tears and your games, Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths, If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths, Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate. Though why should I whine, Whine that the crime was other than mine? Since anyhow you are dead. Or rather, or instead, You were never made. But that too, I am afraid, Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said? You were born, you had body, you died. It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all. Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you All.

The School of Beautys a tavern now. The Madam is underground. Out at Lincoln, among the graves Her own is early found. Where the thickest, tallest monument Cuts grandly into the air The Madam lies, contentedly.

Her fortune, too, lies there, Converted into cool hard steel And bright red velvet lining; While over her tan impassivity Shot silk is shining.

When Mrs. Martins Booker T. Ruined Rosa Brown Mrs. Martin moved away To the low west side of town.

Dont care if I never see that boy Again to the end of my days. He wrung my heart like a chicken neck. And he made me a disgrace. Dont come to tell me hes dyin. Dont come to tell me hes dead.

Disgusting, isnt it, dealing out the damns To every comer? Hits the heart like pain. Disgusting, isnt it, dealing out the damns To every comer? Hits the heart like pain.

And calling women (Marys) chicks and broads, Men hep, and cats, or corny to the jive. Being seen Everywhere (keeping Alive), Rhumboogie (and the joint is jumpin, Joe), Brass Rail, Keyhole, De Lisa, Cabin Inn. And all the other garbage cans. But grin. Because there is a clean unanxious place To which you creep on Sundays. And you cool In lovely sadness.

No one giggles where You bathe your sweet vulgarity in prayer.

To whatever you incline, your final choice here must be handling Occasional sweet clichs with a dishonesty of deft tact. For these people are stricken, they want none of your long-range messages, Only the sweet clichs, to pamper them, modify fright. Many friends have sent flowers, clubs have been kind with sprays, Wreaths. The flowers provide a kind of heat. Sick Thick odor-loveliness winds nicely about the shape of mourning, A dainty horror.

People think of flowers upon rot And for moments together the corpse is no colder than they. They glance at each other, want love from each other: Or they do not glance but out of tight eyes vaguely pray. Preacher and tradition of piety and propriety rise. The people wait For the dear blindfold: Heaven is Good denied. Rich are the men who have died. Right. Regular. Regular.

Where I shall find No need for scholarly nonchalance or looks A little to the left or guards upon the Heart to halt love that runs without crookedness Along its crooked corridors. My Father, It is a planned place surely. Out of coils, Unscrewed, released, no more to be marvelous, I shall walk straightly through most proper halls Proper myself, princess of properness.

Ive stayed in the front yard all my life. I want a peek at the back Where its rough and untended and hungry weed grows. A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now And maybe down the alley, To where the charity children play. I want a good time today. They do some wonderful things. They have some wonderful fun. My mother sneers, but I say its fine How they dont have to go in at quarter to nine. My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae Will grow up to be a bad woman.

That Georgell be taken to Jail soon or late (On account of last winter he sold our back gate.) But I say its fine. Honest, I do. And Id like to be a bad woman, too, And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

That cool chick down on Calumet Has got herself a brand new cat, With pretty patent-leather hair. And he is man enough for her. Us other guys dont think hes such A much.