Page:The book of American negro poetry.djvu/112

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
60
William Stanley Braithwaite

SANDY STAR

I

Sculptured Worship

The zones of warmth around his heart,
No alien airs had crossed;
But he awoke one morn to feel
The magic numbness of autumnal frost.

His thoughts were a loose skein of threads,
And tangled emotions, vague and dim;
And sacrificing what he loved
He lost the dearest part of him.

In sculptured worship now he lives,
His one desire a prisoned ache;
If he can never melt again
His very heart will break.


II

Laughing It Out

He had a whim and laughed it out
Upon the exit of a chance;
He floundered in a sea of doubt—
If life was real—or just romance.

Sometimes upon his brow would come
A little pucker of defiance;
He totalled in a word the sum
Of all man made of facts and science.