Hatless, in mocking whiteface, Carl Schurz stands,
tricked by the tempest out of blackest bronze.

His basalt Negroes limp along their frieze:
Bare chested, fetters broken, they take liberties

Bewildered now to be so unalike,
Who were for one another from the start
The kind of perfect double that we all

From The Deep-Souf:
                                   “Fer nigras doan-care none;
ah lern meh erleh, nevah trus’ a one.

The room is too small; viscous Diana
stands with her hair in lamp, tassels

shade her in halos like comic book

I'm sitting on a bench at One Hundred and Fifteenth
and Riverside Drive, with my books beside me,
early for my lesson in Chinese

Down the long curving walk you trudge to the street,
Stoop-shouldered in defeat, a cardboard suitcase
In each hand. Gerda, don’t leave! the child cries

My dear, you moved so rapidly through my life
I see you as a ghostly blur;
You are the subject, I the ornament

Saturday noon: the morning of the mind 
Moves through a mist to breakfast: damp from sleep, 
Rustic and rude, the partial self comes down 

At seventeen I’ve come to read a poem
At Princeton. Now my young hosts inquire
If I would like to meet Professor Einstein.
But I’m too conscious I have nothing to say

In that high thin sun, in that provincial winter,
surely Madeleine
                          —et vous, Madame, mère bien-aimée