Robert Hayden(1913–1980)
Paul Laurence Dunbar
For HerbertMartin
We lay red roses on his grave,
speak sorrowfully of him
as if he were but newly dead
And so it seems to us
this raw spring day, though years
before we two were born he was
a young poet dead.
Poet of our youth—
his "cri du coeur5 our own,
his verses "in a broken tongue
beguiling as an elder
brother's antic lore.
Their sad blackface lilt and croon
survive him like
The happy look (subliminal
of victim, dying man)
a summer's tintypes6 hold.
T h e roses flutter in the wind;
we weight their stems
with stones, then drive away.