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Caroling Dusk/Fulfillment

From Wikisource
Caroling Dusk (1927)
edited by Countee Cullen
Fulfillment by Helene Johnson
Helene Johnson4759803Caroling Dusk — Fulfillment1927Countee Cullen

FULFILLMENT

To climb a hill that hungers for the sky,To dig my hands wrist deep in pregnant earth,To watch a young bird, veering, learn to fly,To give a still, stark poem shining birth.
To hear the rain drool, dimpling, down the drainAnd splash with a wet giggle in the street,To ramble in the twilight after supper,And to count the pretty faces that you meet.
To ride to town on trolleys, crowded, teemingWith joy and hurry and laughter and push and sweat—Squeezed next a patent-leathered Negro dreamingOf a wrinkled river and a minnow net.
To buy a paper from a breathless boy,And read of kings and queens in foreign lands,Hyperbole of romance and adventure,All for a penny the color of my hand.
To lean against a strong tree’s bosom, sentientAnd hushed before the silent prayer it breathes,To melt the still snow with my seething bodyAnd kiss the warm earth tremulous underneath.
Ah, life, to let your stabbing beauty pierce meAnd wound me like we did the studded Christ,To grapple with you, loving you too fiercely,And to die bleeding—consummate with Life.