“Summertime and the Living . . .”

Nobody planted roses, he recalls,

but sunflowers gangled there sometimes,

tough-stalked and bold

and like the vivid children there unplanned.

There circus-poster horses curveted

in trees of heaven

above the quarrels and shattered glass,

and he was bareback rider of them all.

No roses there in summer—

oh, never roses except when people died—

and no vacations for his elders,

so harshened after each unrelenting day

that they were shouting-angry.

But summer was, they said, the poor folks’ time

of year. And he remembers

how they would sit on broken steps amid

The fevered tossings of the dusk, the dark,

wafting hearsay with funeral-parlor fans

or making evening solemn by

their quietness. Feels their Mosaic eyes

upon him, though the florist roses

that only sorrow could afford

long since have bidden them Godspeed.

Oh, summer summer summertime—

Then grim street preachers shook

their tambourines and Bibles in the face

of tolerant wickedness;

then Elks parades and big splendiferous

Jack Johnson in his diamond limousine

set the ghetto burgeoning

with fantasies

of Ethiopia spreading her gorgeous wings.