A few poems written by Gwendolyn Brooks and published in the poetry column called Lights and Shadows “A Little Bit of Everything” in the Chicago Defender:
Another Girl, September 12, 1936
Another girl has known
The agony I know —
Another girl has known
This bitterness and so
I have no right to sorrow
I have no right to cry
Another girl has suffered
Even as I
Silence, September 18, 1936
There is a silence that draws on with years,
And you who stare into your glass with eyes
Surprised and dim with pale spontaneous
tears,
Come dry the salty drops and calm the sighs.
There is a silence that grows deep with age
For you who dread the coming of that white
That stamps the termination of your stage
Of Emerald youth, there is a finer light.
A clearer, warmer, more quiescent glow
Oh, who would rather stand in lightening’s
blaze.
Amidst a shrieking blare and windy flow
Than in the stilly softness of moon rays?
I am not old. I would that I were old
Lost in the sweet recesses of that state.
When fold on fold of stillness, fold on fold
Breaks through the strained heart’s queerly
bolted gate
I still am young – but would I were not
young.
But at that time of life when youth’s cold
load
From off the heart, like some sheer wrap
is flung
And all’s pacific in the soul’s abode
There is a silence fashioned of dead fears
And gentle faiths in what has not yet been.
A perfect silence that comes on with years.
And clear’s a space that truth may enter in.
Two Songs For Friends, October 31, 1936
(Lavinia Brascher)
I’m thinking of you tonight
Of your quiet, lovely eyes
I’m thinking of the dearness
That in your nature lies
Thinking of you tonight.
And pleasant hours passed
Together, days long gone —
Would happiness might last!
Thinking of you tonight,
Fondly, dreamily —
Wondering if you are thinking
Of me.
(Lucille Harris)
I’ve little care if you’re “good” or “bad,”
Save care for your poor sake —
I demand alone that you own a balm
To calm my wearying ache.
My dear, this means: let me come to you
When I desire to come
And put my sorrows in your hands.
Not all. But some.
I’ve little care if you’re “good” or “bad”
What is bad, what good?
Let me but come away from you
Thinking — “She understood.”
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