Caroling Dusk/Incident

by Countee Cullen

For other versions of this work, see Incident.

INCIDENT

Once riding in old Baltimore, Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,I saw a Baltimorean Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small, And he was no whit bigger,And so I smiled, but he poked out His tongue and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore From May until December:Of all the things that happened there That’s all that I remember.