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Home  »  The Book of American Negro Poetry  »  Translation

James Weldon Johnson, ed. (1871–1938). The Book of American Negro Poetry. 1922.

Translation

WE trekked into a far country,

My friend and I.

Our deeper content was never spoken,

But each knew all the other said.

He told me how calm his soul was laid

By the lack of anvil and strife.

“The wooing kestrel,” I said, “mutes his mating-note

To please the harmony of this sweet silence.”

And when at the day’s end

We laid tired bodies ’gainst

The loose warm sands,

And the air fleeced its particles for a coverlet;

When star after star came out

To guard their lovers in oblivion—

My soul so leapt that my evening prayer

Stole my morning song!