When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.

I went down to the river, I set down on the bank. I tried to think but couldn't, So I jumped in and sank.

The past has been a mint Of blood and sorrow. That must not be True of tomorrow.

Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negroes had but few pegs to fall.

I got the Weary Blues And I can't be satisfied.

Don't come giving me, who's old enough to die and too near blind to create anything any more anyhow, a great big banquet that you eat up in honor of your own stomachs as much as in honor of me- who's toothless and can't eat.