If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.

The loss of love is a terrible thing; They lie who say that death is worse.

I have a rendezvous with life.

We shall not always plant while others reap

I was reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage.

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:/ To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

Whatever lives is granted breath But by the grace and sufferance of Death.