Translation by Anne Spencer. James Weldon Johnson, ed. 1922. The Book of American Negro Poetry

James Weldon Johnson, ed. (1871–1938). The Book of American Negro Poetry. 1922.

Translation

Anne Spencer


WE trekked into a far country,
My friend and I.
Our deeper content was never spoken,
But each knew all the other said.
He told me how calm his soul was laid	5
By the lack of anvil and strife.
“The wooing kestrel,” I said, “mutes his mating-note
To please the harmony of this sweet silence.”
And when at the day’s end
We laid tired bodies ’gainst	10
The loose warm sands,
And the air fleeced its particles for a coverlet;
When star after star came out
To guard their lovers in oblivion—
My soul so leapt that my evening prayer	15
Stole my morning song!