Sadness

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  I noticed the change in Bailey before I discovered that she was gone. He lost his interest in everything. He mulled around and it would be safe to say “he paled.” Momma noticed and said that he was feeling poorly because of the change in seasons (we were nearing fall), so she went to the woods for certain leaves, made him a tea and forced him to drink it after a heaping spoonful of sulfur and molasses. The fact that he didn't fight it, didn't try to talk his way out of taking the medicine, showed without a glimmer of doubt he was very sick. If I had disliked Joyce while she had Bailey in her grasp, I hated her for leaving. I missed the tolerance she had brought to him (he had nearly given up sarcasm and playing jokes on the country people) and he had taken to telling me his secrets again. But now that she was gone he rivaled me in being uncommunicative. He closed in upon himself like a pond swallowing a stone. There was no evidence that he had ever opened up, and when I mentioned her he responded with “Joyce who?” Months later, when Momma was waiting on Joyce's aunt, she said, “Yes ma'am, Mrs. Goodman, life's just one thing right after the other.” Mrs. Goodman was leaning on the red Coca-Cola box. “That's the blessed truth, Sister Henderson.” She sipped the expensive drink. “Things change so fast, it make your head swim.” That was Momma's way of opening up a conversation. I stayed mouse-quiet so that I'd be able to hear the gossip and take it to Bailey. “Now, you take little Joyce. She used to be around the Store all the time. Then she went up just like smoke. We ain't seed hide nor hair of her in months.” “No'm. I shamed to tell you … what took her off.” She settled in on a kitchen chair. Momma spied me in the shadows. “Sister, the Lord don't like little jugs with big ears. You ain't got something to do, I'll find something for you.” The truth had to float to me through the kitchen door. “I ain't got much, Sister Henderson, but I give that child all I had.” Momma said she bound that was true. She wouldn't say “bet.” “And after all I did, she run off with one of those railroad porters. She was loose just like her mammy before her. You know how they say 'blood will tell? ” Momma asked, “How did the snake catch her?” “Well, now, understand me, Sister Henderson, I don't hold this against you, I knows you a God-fearing woman. But it seems like she met him here.” Momma was flustered. Such goings on at the Store? She asked, “At the Store?” “Yes, ma'am. 'Member when that bunch of Elks come over for their baseball game?” (Momma must have remembered. I did.) “Well, as it turned out, he was one of them.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  His voice thrust sweet and sour, and he accented the “dear.” “I guess you're a man ... Turn down that record player.” She shouted the last to the revelers. “I'm your son, Mother Dear.” A swift parry. “Is it eleven o'clock, Bailey?” That was a feint, designed to catch the opponent offguard. “It's after one o'clock, Mother Dear.” He had opened up the game, and the strokes from then on would have to be direct. “Clidell is the only man in this house, and if you think you're so much of a man ...” Her voice popped like a razor on a strap. “I'm leaving now, Mother Dear.” The deferential tone heightened the content of his announcement. In a bloodless coup he had thrust beneath her visor. Now, laid open, she had no recourse but to hurry along the tunnel of her anger, headlong. “Then Goddammit, get your heels to clicking.” And her heels were clicking down the linoleum hall as Bailey tap-danced up the stairs to his room. When rain comes finally, washing away a low sky of muddy ocher, we who could not control the phenomenon are pressed into relief. The near-occult feeling: The fact of being witness to the end of the world gives way to tangible things. Even if the succeeding sensations are not common, they are at least not mysterious. Bailey was leaving home. At one o'clock in the morning, my little brother, who in my lonely days of inferno dwelling had protected me from goblins, gnomes, gremlins and the devils, was leaving home. I had known all along the inevitable outcome and that I dared not poke into his knapsack of misery, even with the offer to help him carry it. I went to his room, against my judgment, and found him throwing his carefully tended clothes into a pillowcase. His maturity embarrassed me. In his little face, balled up like a fist, I found no vestige of my brother, and when, not knowing what to say, I asked if I could help, he answered, “Leave me the shit alone.” I leaned on the doorjamb, lending him my physical presence but said no more. “She wants me out, does she? Well, I'll get out of here so fast I'll leave the air on fire. She calls herself a mother? Huh! I'll be damned. She's seen the last of me. I can make it. I'll always make it.” At some point he noticed me still in the doorway, and his consciousness stretched to remember our relationship.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  35. Annoyed. Really I am annoyed this time And I have left her. But the weeping willow wept at my door And quenched my anger. When the Spring rain has ceased I will go back to her in moonlight, But discreet moonlight and much veiled I pray. 36. Crickets. Autumn casts herself carelessly over the earth In a brocade of many colours, And yet it is just now That the crickets begin to change their cry to: 'Patch those rags, patch those rags. 'I think they carry economy Almost too far. 37. Emotion. There is white frost on the pond And on the grass. There is light mist. I walk on frozen leaves that go crack And my heart beats And it is delightful. 38. Moonlight. I detest my phantom shadow In the bright moon. I look, thinned out by love, And think, smoothing my hair: Am I really as thin as that? 39. Quicks Hours. Wet in the rain of morning. You are Still in my arms. The hours in bed are quick hours. See, how delightful I look with this paper on my brow As a bride's headdress. What pet name Will you give me when we are married? But you have gone to sleep again And do not hear the evening bell. 40. Green Willow. The breeze is so light That when it soothes the green willow It seems not to touch her. Indistinct shadow. We have set our two pillows Very close in the bed. Our mornings and our evenings. And our useless little quarrels And then our letters. Is waiting or parting bitterer? Let us not separate. 41. His Pretty Gesture. Because of his pretty gesture I have fallen completely in love with him. My letter written in common character Will be worth more than a verbal message. But I may not hold him yet. I am going to drink sake all night Without bothering to warm it. I lie down on the floor Just where I am, and sleep. I wake with a Start To hear the night watch crying: 'Fire, take care of fire!' 42. Bamboo. The sparrow is excellently At home with the bamboo. One day the bamboo is shaped into a snare And catches the sparrow. Is that not so? 43. Two Fan Game. Two thrown fans Have fallen across each other. It is a good sign. I see two mortals close in each other's arms Like two leaves fallen together. Will he be a fine chrysanthemum? I will put him in a vase And look at him. He will be plum blossom Having both scent and colour. 44. Since this Morning. At little day I am cold. A maple leaf Planes down and settles silently. The things one believes. I have hated day Since this morning: His insensitive glance Looked at me coldly Like the pale dawn moon. 45. Who Loves.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  Uneme sent Samanosuke his thanks, and hastened at daybreak to the temple without even taking time to bid his mother farewell. As he Stood in the chief entrance to the temple, which was in the form of a low tower, several people Started talking noisily about Hara-kiri. They said: 'Early this morning a young samurai is coming here to kill himself. They say that he is very beautiful. Even an ugly son is dear to his parents; the father and mother of this young samurai will be smitten with despair at realising that so accomplished a son must die. Surely it is a pity to kill such a splendid young man.' Uneme could hardly restrain his tears on hearing these people. The temple quickly filled, and he hid himself behind a door and waited for the arrival of his darling Ukyo. Shortly after, a fine new litter was seen to approach, borne by several men, surrounded by guards. It Sopped opposite the door, and Ukyo descended from it with the utmost calmness. He was wearing a white silk garment embroidered with autumn flowers, having pale blue facings* and a skirt. He Stopped for a moment and looked about him. On the tombs were some thousands of wooden tablets bearing the names of those who were buried there. Among them rose a wild cherry tree with white blossom on the upper branches only. Ukyo looked at the pale, fading flowers, and softly murmured an old Chinese poem: The flowers wait for next Spring, Trusting that the same hands shall caress them. But men's hearts will no longer he the same, And you will only know that everything changes, 0 poor lovers. The seat destined for the Hara-kiri had been placed in the garden of the temple. Ukyo calmly seated himself on the gold-bordered mats and summoned his attendant, whose duty it was to cut off the condemned man's head to shorten his suffering after he had manipulated the dagger in his belly. This attendant's name was Kajuyu Kitji Kawa, and he was a courtier of the same Lord, Ukyo cut off the wonderful locks of his hair, put them in a white paper and gave them to Kajuyu, praying him to send them to his venerable mother at Horikawa in Kyoto as a keepsake. The priest then began to pray for the salvation of Ukyo's soul. Ukyo said: 'Beauty in this world cannot endure for long. I am glad to die while I am young and beautiful, and before my countenance fades like a flower.' Then he took a green paper from his sleeve and wrote his farewell poem upon it. This was his poem: I loved the beauty of flowers in springtime; In autumn the glory of the moon Was my delight; But now that I am looking upon death face to my face, These joys are vanishing; They were all dreams. Then he thrust the knife into his belly, and Kajuyu at once Struck off his head from behind.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  Shall I be noisy cricket Or firefly burning in silence, Dumb grief or tearful parting? And when I think we might Never have met, Been utter Strangers. 83. Spring Branches.Spring flowers at the branch end Over the water. Love is very deep, Their reflection is very deep. I had to wet my sleeves To gather them, And I want to go on Wetting, wetting, wetting my sleeves. 84. First Snow.This first snow Is very white Like first love. My maid asks from the doorstep: 'Where shall I throw The tea-leaves?' 85. Bed.Under the unnecessarily large Mosquito curtain My little heart Is fiercer than a nightlight. 86. Then.The flowers come to blossom, then We look at the flowers, then They wither, then [image file=image_rsrc1KZ.jpg] [image file=image_rsrc1M0.jpg]

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  If the morning sounds and smells were touched with the supernatural, the late afternoon had all the features of the normal Arkansas life. In the dying sunlight the people dragged, rather than their empty cotton sacks. Brought back to the Store, the pickers would step out of the backs of trucks and fold down, dirt-disappointed, to the ground. No matter how much they had picked, it wasn't enough. Their wages wouldn't even get them out of debt to my grandmother, not to mention the staggering bill that waited on them at the white commissary downtown . The sounds of the new morning had been replaced with grumbles about cheating houses, weighted scales, snakes, skimpy cotton and dusty rows. In later years I was to confront the stereotyped picture of gay song-singing cotton pickers with such inordinate rage that I was told even by fellow Blacks that my paranoia was embarrassing. But I had seen the fingers cut by the mean little cotton bolls, and I had witnessed the backs and shoulders and arms and legs resisting any further demands. Some of the workers would leave their sacks at the Store to be picked up the following morning, but a few had to take them home for repairs. I winced to picture them sewing the coarse material under a coal-oil lamp with fingers stiffening from the day's work. In too few hours they would have to walk back to Sister Henderson's Store, get vittles and load, again, onto the trucks. Then they would face another day of trying to earn enough for the whole year with the heavy knowledge that they were going to end the season as they started it. Without the money or credit necessary to sustain a family for three months. In cotton-picking time the late afternoons revealed the harshness of Black Southern life, which in the early morning had been softened by nature's blessing of grogginess, forgetfulness and the soft lamplight.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  33 The house seemed smaller and quieter after the trip south, and the first bloom of San Francisco's glamour had dulled around the edges. Adults had lost the wisdom from the surface of their faces. I reasoned that I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss. Bailey was much older too. Even years older than I had become. He had made friends during that youth-shattering summer with a group of slick street boys. His language had changed. He was forever dropping slangy terms into his sentences like dumplings in a pot. He may have been glad to see me, but he didn't act much like it. When I tried to tell him of my adventures and misadventures, he responded with a casual indifference which stilled the tale on my lips. His new companions cluttered the living room and halls wearing zoot suits and wide-brimmed hats and dangling long snaky chains hooked at their belts. They drank sloe gin secretly and told dirty jokes. Although I had no regrets, I told myself sadly that growing up was not the painless process one would have thought it to be . In one area my brother and I found ourselves closer. I had gotten the knack of public dancing. All the lessons with Mother, who danced so effortlessly, had not borne immediate fruit. But with my newly and dearly bought assurance I could give myself up to the rhythms and let them propel me where they willed. Mother allowed us to go to the big band dances in the crowded city auditorium. We danced the jitterbug to Count Basie, the Lindy and the Big Apple to Cab Calloway and the Half Time Texas Hop to Duke Ellington. In a matter of months cute Bailey and his tall sister were famous as those dancing fools (which was an apt description). Although I had risked my life (not intentionally) in her defense, Mother's reputation, good name and community image ceased, or nearly ceased, being of interest to me. It was not that I cared for her less but that I concerned myself less about everything and everyone. I often thought of the tedium of life once one had seen all its surprises. In two months, I had become blasé. Mother and Bailey were entangled in the Oedipal skein. Neither could do without or do with the other; yet the constrictions of conscience and society, morality and ethos dictated a separation. On some flimsy excuse, Mother ordered Bailey out of the house. On an equally flimsy excuse he complied. Bailey was sixteen, small for his age, bright for any and hopelessly in love with Mother Dear. Her heroes were her friends and her friends were big men in the rackets. They wore two-hundred-dollar Chesterfield coats, Busch shoes at fifty dollars a pair and Knox hats. Their shirts were monogrammed and their fingernails manicured. How could a sixteen-year-old boy hope to compete with such overshadowing rivals?

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  I am sure that, if I had really been your true love, you would have borne me company at least beyond the field where the tigers and wolves can be heard howling. 'I have many other things with which to reproach you, but am feeling infinitely sad. And even now I cannot help loving you. I do nothing but weep for my unhappy passion. I beg you to pray, only just once, for the safety of my soul after my death. This world is vain and uncertain; its contents are but a dream! I will finish my farewell letter with a poem: 'Tie morning flowers were born in their beauty. But the wind rose and carried them away Even before night. 'I have Still much to write, but evening is drawing near, and I must cease. To my dear Gonkuro from his Jinnosuke. May 26th, in the seventh year of Kuanbun(a.d. 1667),' He sealed the letter and gave it to his servant, Dengoro, saying: 'Take this letter to Gonkuro this evening when it is dark.'And, as soon as twilight came, he went to the place fixed for the duel. He dressed himself sumptuously, for he thought that it would be his very last costuming. His under-garments were of white silk, and his over-garment was purple with cherry blossoms embroidered on the hips. His emblem was the Jinko, * and his sleeves were long, as they were worn by pages. He carried two swords of Tadoyoshi Hizen in a grey girdle. The pine-tree-field of the god Teujin was two miles from the town. Jinnosuke sat down on a moss-covered Stone opposite a big camphor tree, and waited for his antagonist. As the darkness grew and the shapes of things became dim, Gonkuro arrived out of breath, crying: 'Are you there, Jinnosuke? 'Jinnosuke answered coldly: 'No one so base is a friend of mine.'Gonkuro began to weep, and said: 'I do not try to excuse myself. I shall tell you all my heart when we are in another world, Jinnosuke. Only then will you know me.' But Jinnosuke answered icily: 'I have no need of your help. I am Strong enough to fight alone.'While they were thus becoming heated, Ibei Hanzawa arrived, seconded by sixteen samurai of very vulgar appearance. They meant to fight fiercely, with no thought for their lives. Jinnosuke killed two of them, while Gonkuro Struck down four. Seven others were seriously wounded, the rest fled in terror, and Ibei was killed in single combat. Gonkuro's servant, Hitjisuke, died defending his master. Gonkuro had a slight wound on the forehead, and Jinnosuke was also Stricken in the left shoulder. The two samurai remained conquerors. There was a little Buddhist temple called Yeianji quite close, to which Gonkuro and Jinnosuke walked, and there asked the priest to bury them, after they had killed themselves by Hara-kiri. But the priest dissuaded them, saying: 'You have both behaved very honourably in this duel.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  I walked into rooms where people were laughing, their voices hitting the walls like stones, and I simply stood still—in the midst of the riot of sound. After a minute or two, silence would rush into the room from its hiding place because I had eaten up all the sounds. In the first weeks my family accepted my behavior as a post-rape, post-hospital affliction. (Neither the term nor the experience was mentioned in Grandmother's house, where Bailey and I were again staying.) They understood that I could talk to Bailey, but to no one else. Then came the last visit from the visiting nurse, and the doctor said I was healed. That meant that I should be back on the sidewalks playing handball or enjoying the games I had been given when I was sick. When I refused to be the child they knew and accepted me to be, I was called impudent and my muteness sullenness. For a while I was punished for being so uppity that I wouldn't speak; and then came the thrashings, given by any relative who felt himself offended. • • • We were on the train going back to Stamps, and this time it was I who had to console Bailey. He cried his heart out down the aisles of the coach, and pressed his little-boy body against the window pane looking for a last glimpse of his Mother Dear . I have never known if Momma sent for us, or if the St. Louis family just got fed up with my grim presence. There is nothing more appalling than a constantly morose child. I cared less about the trip than about the fact that Bailey was unhappy, and had no more thought of our destination than if I had simply been heading for the toilet.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  during a set time, but that he would follow within a month or so when outstanding bills were paid. Although our mother now lived in San Francisco, Momma must have felt it wiser to go first to Los Angeles where our father was. She dictated letters to me, advising them both that we were on our way. And we were on our way, but unable to say when. Our clothes were washed, ironed and packed, so for an immobile time we wore those things not good enough to glow under the California sun. Neighbors, who understood the complications of travel, said goodbye a million times. “Well, if I don't see you before your ticket comes through, Sister Henderson, have a good trip and hurry back home.” A widowed friend of Momma's had agreed to look after (cook, wash, clean and provide company for) Uncle Willie, and after thousands of arrested departures, at last we left Stamps. My sorrow at leaving was confined to a gloom at separating from Bailey for a month (we had never been parted), the imagined loneliness of Uncle Willie (he put on a good face, though at thirty-five he'd never been separated from his mother) and the loss of Louise, my first friend. I wouldn't miss Mrs. Flowers, for she had given me her secret word which called forth a djinn who was to serve me all my life: books.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  18 Another day was over. In the soft dark the cotton truck spilled the pickers out and roared out of the yard with a sound like a giant's fart. The workers stepped around in circles for a few seconds as if they had found themselves unexpectedly in an unfamiliar place. Their minds sagged. In the Store the men's faces were the most painful to watch, but I seemed to have no choice. When they tried to smile to carry off their tiredness as if it was nothing, the body did nothing to help the mind's attempt at disguise. Their shoulders drooped even as they laughed, and when they put their hands on their hips in a show of jauntiness, the palms slipped the thighs as if the pants were waxed. “Evening, Sister Henderson. Well, back where we started, huh?” “Yes, sir, Brother Stewart. Back where you started, bless the Lord.” Momma could not take the smallest achievement for granted. People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed. “That's just who get the credit. Yes, ma'am. The blessed Lord.” Their overalls and shirts seemed to be torn on purpose and the cotton lint and dust in their hair gave them the appearance of people who had turned gray in the past few hours. The women's feet had swollen to fill the discarded men's shoes they wore, and they washed their arms at the well to dislodge dirt and splinters that had accrued to them as part of the day's pickings. I thought them all hateful to have allowed themselves to be worked like oxen, and even more shameful to try to pretend that things were not as bad as they were. When they leaned too hard on the partly glass candy counter, I wanted to tell them shortly to stand up and “assume the posture of a man,” but Momma would have beaten me if I'd opened my mouth. She ignored the creaks of the counter under their weight and moved around filling their orders and keeping up a conversation. “Going to put your dinner on, Sister Williams?” Bailey and I helped Momma, while Uncle Willie sat on the porch and heard the day's account. “Praise the Lord, no, ma'am. Got enough left over from last night to do us. We going home and get cleaned up to go to the revival meeting.” Go to church in that cloud of weariness? Not go home and lay those tortured bones in a feather bed?

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  As time went on, I latched onto all sorts of other gender identities and theories that seemed to hold potential explanations for my subconscious feelings. For quite a while, I thought of myself as a crossdresser and viewed my female subconscious sex as a “feminine side” that was trying to get out. But after years of crossdressing, I eventually lost interest in it, realizing that my desire to be female had nothing to do with clothing or femininity per se. There was also a period of time when I embraced the word “pervert” and viewed my desire to be female as some sort of sexual kink. But after exploring that path, it became obvious that explanation could not account for the vast majority of instances when I thought about being female in a nonsexual context. And after reading Kate Bornstein’s and Leslie Feinberg’s writings for the first time, I embraced the words “transgender” and “queer.” I began to think of myself as bigendered, viewing my female subconscious sex as being just as legitimate as my physical maleness. In the years just prior to my transition, I started to express my femaleness as much as possible within the context of having a male body; I became a very androgynous queer boy in the eyes of the world. While it felt relieving to simply be myself, not to care about what other people thought of me, I still found myself grappling with a constant, compelling subconscious knowledge that I should be female rather than male. After twenty years of exploration and experimentation, I eventually reached the conclusion that my female subconscious sex had nothing to do with gender roles, femininity, or sexual expression—it was about the personal relationship I had with my own body. For me, the hardest part about being trans has not been the discrimination or ridicule that I have faced for defying societal gender norms, but rather the internal pain I experienced when my subconscious and conscious sexes were at odds with one another. I think this is best captured by the psychological term “cognitive dissonance,” which describes the mental tension and stress that occur in a person’s mind when they find themselves holding two contradictory thoughts or views simultaneously—in this case, subconsciously seeing myself as female while consciously dealing with the fact that I was male. This gender dissonance can manifest itself in a number of ways. Sometimes it felt like stress or anxiousness, which led to marathon battles with insomnia. Other times, it surfaced as jealousy or anger at other people who seemed to enjoy taking their gender for granted. But most of all, it felt like sadness to me—a sort of gender sadness—a chronic and persistent grief over the fact that I felt so wrong in my body.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  My last memory of that night was the question, Why is he saying the baby prayer? We had been saying the “Our Father, which art in heaven” for years. For days the Store was a strange country, and we were all newly arrived immigrants. Bailey didn't talk, smile or apologize. His eyes were so vacant, it seemed his soul had flown away, and at meals I tried to give him the best pieces of meat and the largest portion of dessert, but he turned them down. Then one evening at the pig pen he said without warning, “I saw Mother Dear.” If he said it, it was bound to be the truth. He wouldn't lie to me. I don't think I asked him where or when. “In the movies.” He laid his head on the wooden railing. “It wasn't really her. It was a woman named Kay Francis. She's a white movie star who looks just like Mother Dear.” There was no difficulty believing that a white movie star looked like our mother and that Bailey had seen her. He told me that the movies were changed each week, but when another picture came to Stamps staring Kay Francis he would tell me and we'd go together. He even promised to sit with me. He had stayed late on the previous Saturday to see the film over again. I understood, and understood too why he couldn't tell Momma or Uncle Willie. She was our mother and belonged to us. She was never mentioned to anyone because we simply didn't have enough of her to share. We had to wait nearly two months before Kay Francis returned to Stamps. Bailey's mood had lightened considerably but he lived in a state of expectation and it made him more nervous than he was usually. When he told me that the movie would be shown, we went into our best behavior and were the exemplary children that Grandmother deserved and wished to think us. It was a gay light comedy, and Kay Francis wore long-sleeved white silk shirts with big cuff links. Her bedroom was all satin and flowers in vases, and her maid, who was Black, went around saying “Lawsy missy” all the time. There was a Negro chauffeur too, who rolled his eyes and scratched his head, and I wondered how on earth an idiot like that could be trusted with her beautiful cars. The whitefolks downstairs laughed every few minutes, throwing the discarded snicker up to the Negroes in the buzzards' roost. The sound would jag around in our air for an indecisive second before the balcony's occupants accepted it and sent their own guffaws to riot with it against the walls of the theater.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  When the leaves of the sainfoin redden. I weep at every midnight. 21. The Letter.If there were no moon I would read it by the Winter snow light, Or in Summer by the fireflies, Or if there were no moon or snow or fireflies I would read it by the light of my heart. 22. Spring all in Flower.Spring all in flower And the dark Stain of the pine forest On the watershed of the Sumida. The gracious cherry trees reflected In that deep water, which is love. To-day two Chinese ducks Float in the thread of the current, And I too am married. 23. Feast of Kamo.At the feast of Kamo I put rose-mallows in my hair; He never came back, and I am waiting. Time has a way of piling long days, Long days, long days Into a great hill. 24. Return.I know she is light and faithless, But she has come back half repentant And very pale and very sad, A butterfly needs somewhere to rest At evening. 25. A Single Cry.A flight of flying cuckoos Across the moon, a single cry. Is the moon crying cuckoo? Night pales slowly. Men are cruel And women are not. They weep and say over sorrow For a small separation. 26. The Mat.She sulkily pretends to sleep, Turning her back; Suddenly the pretty slender music Of a samisen delicately fingered. Reconciliation. Where is her comb? But there are dawn bells. Separation, and always, always separation, A boat puts out on a lake of the Yoshiwara. 27. Dead Flower or Living.Last night a peach petal was wetted by the rain, And when a girl After her toilet said: 'Which is the more beautiful, I or the peach petal?' And he said: 'Peach petal wetted by the rain is incomparable.' There were tears and a tearing of flowers. To taste the living flower To-night would be quite a good night, my lord, If so you wish. 28. Alone.The device of the two copper plums With silver in them Slowly and very slowly Satisfies. Just as all finishes Dew falls on my clenched hand. I would rather the bean flowered yellow And he were here. 29. Shut In.Cherry flowers do not touch The old Stones of the wall. I am shut in here. I am very much shut in here. There is a part of the trap Where the rat need not touch the curd. The cherry trees are rose beyond Fuji. 30. Since.What has happened to my thoughts Since I knew you? That is easy. Until I met you I had no thoughts. 31. After.After he left me, Two pillows, One body. Where is he now? He must be getting on for Komagata. Damn that cuckoo. 32. Night Rain.Sad night rain, I count the Straws in the mat, He will come, he won't come. I twist a paper frog. Does it Stand? It falls down. A vague presentiment. The little lamp goes down and up, Its oil exhausted. He was always capricious.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  I don't remember much of the trip, but after we reached the segregated southern part of the journey, things must have looked up. Negro passengers, who always traveled with loaded lunch boxes, felt sorry for “the poor little motherless darlings” and plied us with cold fried chicken and potato salad. Years later I discovered that the United States had been crossed thousands of times by frightened Black children traveling alone to their newly affluent parents in Northern cities, or back to grandmothers in Southern towns when the urban North reneged on its economic promises. The town reacted to us as its inhabitants had reacted to all things new before our coming. It regarded us a while without curiosity but with caution, and after we were seen to be harmless (and children) it closed in around us, as a real mother embraces a stranger's child. Warmly, but not too familiarly. We lived with our grandmother and uncle in the rear of the Store (it was always spoken of with a capital s), which she had owned some twenty-five years. Early in the century, Momma (we soon stopped calling her Grandmother) sold lunches to the sawmen in the lumberyard (east Stamps) and the seedmen at the cotton gin (west Stamps). Her crisp meat pies and cool lemonade, when joined to her miraculous ability to be in two places at the same time, assured her business success. From being a mobile lunch counter, she set up a stand between the two points of fiscal interest and supplied the workers' needs for a few years. Then she had the Store built in the heart of the Negro area. Over the years it became the lay center of activities in town. On Saturdays, barbers sat their customers in the shade on the porch of the Store, and troubadours on their ceaseless crawlings through the South leaned across its benches and sang their sad songs of The Brazos while they played juice harps and cigar-box guitars. The formal name of the Store was the Wm. Johnson General Merchandise Store. Customers could find food staples, a good variety of colored thread, mash for hogs, corn for chickens, coal oil for lamps, light bulbs for the wealthy, shoestrings, hair dressing, balloons, and flower seeds. Anything not visible had only to be ordered. Until we became familiar enough to belong to the Store and it to us, we were locked up in a Fun House of Things where the attendant had gone home for life. Each year I watched the field across from the Store turn caterpillar green, then gradually frosty white. I knew exactly how long it would be before the big wagons would pull into the front yard and load on the cotton pickers at daybreak to carry them to the remains of slavery's plantations.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  A woman's voice sang out, “Baylee, Baylee.” And suddenly a claque of women crowded to the door and overflowed into the yard. Dad told me to get out of the car and we went to meet the women. He explained quickly that I was his daughter, which everyone thought to be uncontrollably funny. We were herded into a long room with a bar at one end. Tables sat lopsidedly on a loose-plank floor. The ceiling caught and held my attention. Paper streamers in every possible color waved in the near-still air, and as I watched a few fell to the floor. No one seemed to notice, or if they did, it was obviously unimportant that their sky was falling in. There were a few men on stools at the bar, and they greeted my father with the ease of familiarity. I was taken around and each person was told my name and age. The formal high school “Cómo está usted?” was received as the most charming utterance possible. People clapped me on the back, shook Dad's hand and spoke a rat-a-tat Spanish that I was unable to follow. Baylee was the hero of the hour, and as he warmed under the uninhibited show of affection I saw a new side of the man. His quizzical smile disappeared and he stopped his affected way of talking (it would have been difficult to wedge ers into that rapid Spanish). It seemed hard to believe that he was a lonely person, searching relentlessly in bottles, under women's skirts, in church work and lofty job titles for his “personal niche,” lost before birth and unrecovered since. It was obvious to me then that he had never belonged in Stamps, and less to the slow-moving, slow-thinking Johnson family. How maddening it was to have been born in a cotton field with aspirations of grandeur. In the Mexican bar, Dad had an air of relaxation which I had never seen visit him before. There was no need to pretend in front of those Mexican peasants. As he was, just being himself, he was sufficiently impressive to them. He was an American. He was Black. He spoke Spanish fluently. He had money and he could drink tequila with the best of them. The women liked him too. He was tall and handsome and generous.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I ran from the room clutching my throat and out onto the sidewalk. I crouched down in a squat with my head between my knees. Just to be alone again, away from all of that humanity that echoed my own, made me feel better. The sadness and nausea began to subside. Then I heard the door of the building open and footsteps behind me. It was Chickenhorse, coming to check on me. I wondered how she got elected. “Hey, just making sure you are okay.” “I’m not,” I said. “Do you want to come back inside?” “No, I need air.” “Do you think I should sit with you?” “I should probably just be left alone.” “We aren’t going to hurt you, Lucy.” I looked at her face. For a moment she didn’t look chickeny or horsey. Her eyes were big and brown and with her mouth closed she had nice, plump, red lips. Was it possible that she was actually pretty? “Listen,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on with you. What it is exactly that you’re doing. I mean, aside from the Jamie thing. But, whatever it is—you don’t have to do it.” I laughed out loud, a crazy-sounding laugh. I was crouched on a sidewalk in the middle of the day. Whatever I was doing, of course I had to do it. “You don’t really know me,” I said. “Maybe not,” she said. “But I relate.” I didn’t want her to relate. I didn’t want to be like her. But I knew she was being honest. “So what’s the solution? Never date again?” I asked. She looked at me. “Honestly, I don’t know. Things were so bad for me by the end—the end of my last run. It could have killed me, easily. If I ever end up in that emotional space again? In a way, I think I’d be lucky to be dead. It would be worse to roam the planet, a tormented soul, for the rest of my life.” Maybe this was why I was in group, to remind people like her of the hell that awaited them just on the other side. I was here to be a cautionary tale. “How did you get through your withdrawal without dying?” I asked. “I just kept going. One minute at a time. And gradually I saw that the feelings didn’t destroy me.” “But you were forced to give him up, right? You didn’t choose to do it. I mean, he got a restraining order?” “What does a restraining order mean to people like us? In the face of our kind of obsession? But I guess, technically, yes, I was forbidden from being with him. I didn’t make the choice.”

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  She was around for a few months, and as she had appeared, out of limbo, so she disappeared into nothingness. There was no gossip about her, no clues to her leaving or her whereabouts. I noticed the change in Bailey before I discovered that she was gone. He lost his interest in everything. He mulled around and it would be safe to say “he paled.” Momma noticed and said that he was feeling poorly because of the change in seasons (we were nearing fall), so she went to the woods for certain leaves, made him a tea and forced him to drink it after a heaping spoonful of sulfur and molasses. The fact that he didn't fight it, didn't try to talk his way out of taking the medicine, showed without a glimmer of doubt he was very sick. If I had disliked Joyce while she had Bailey in her grasp, I hated her for leaving. I missed the tolerance she had brought to him (he had nearly given up sarcasm and playing jokes on the country people) and he had taken to telling me his secrets again. But now that she was gone he rivaled me in being uncommunicative. He closed in upon himself like a pond swallowing a stone. There was no evidence that he had ever opened up, and when I mentioned her he responded with “Joyce who?” Months later, when Momma was waiting on Joyce's aunt, she said, “Yes ma'am, Mrs. Goodman, life's just one thing right after the other.” Mrs. Goodman was leaning on the red Coca-Cola box. “That's the blessed truth, Sister Henderson.” She sipped the expensive drink. “Things change so fast, it make your head swim.” That was Momma's way of opening up a conversation. I stayed mouse-quiet so that I'd be able to hear the gossip and take it to Bailey. “Now, you take little Joyce. She used to be around the Store all the time. Then she went up just like smoke. We ain't seed hide nor hair of her in months.” “No'm. I shamed to tell you … what took her off.” She settled in on a kitchen chair. Momma spied me in the shadows. “Sister, the Lord don't like little jugs with big ears. You ain't got something to do, I'll find something for you.” The truth had to float to me through the kitchen door. “I ain't got much, Sister Henderson, but I give that child all I had.” Momma said she bound that was true. She wouldn't say “bet.” “And after all I did, she run off with one of those railroad porters. She was loose just like her mammy before her. You know how they say 'blood will tell?” Momma asked, “How did the snake catch her?” “Well, now, understand me, Sister Henderson, I don't hold this against you, I knows you a God-fearing woman. But it seems like she met him here.”

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Mother and daughter would walk in the garden, or wander about together through the meadows, and Anna would remember the son of her dreams, who had played with her in those meadows. A great sadness would cloud her eyes for a moment, an infinite regret as she looked down at Stephen; and Stephen, quick to discern that sadness, would press Anna’s hand with small, anxious fingers; she would long to inquire what troubled her mother, but would be held speechless through shyness. The scents of the meadows would move those two strangely—the queer, pungent smell from the hearts of dog-daisies; the buttercup smell, faintly green like the grass; and then meadowsweet that grew close by the hedges. Sometimes Stephen must tug at her mother’s sleeve sharply—intolerable to bear that thick fragrance alone! One day she had said: ‘Stand still or you’ll hurt it—it’s all round us—it’s a white smell, it reminds me of you!’ And then she had flushed, and had glanced up quickly, rather frightened in case she should find Anna laughing. But her mother had looked at her curiously, gravely, puzzled by this creature who seemed all contradictions—at one moment so hard, at another so gentle, gentle to tenderness, even. Anna had been stirred, as her child had been stirred, by the breath of the meadowsweet under the hedges; for in this they were one, the mother and daughter, having each in her veins the warm Celtic blood that takes note of such things—could they only have divined it, such simple things might have formed a link between them . A great will to loving had suddenly possessed Anna Gordon, there in that sunlit meadow—had possessed them both as they stood together, bridging the gulf between maturity and childhood. They had gazed at each other as though asking for something, as though seeking for something, the one from the other; then the moment had passed—they had walked on in silence, no nearer in spirit than before. 3 Sometimes Anna would drive Stephen into Great Malvern, to the shops, with lunch at the Abbey Hotel on cold beef and wholesome rice pudding. Stephen loathed these excursions, which meant dressing up, but she bore them because of the honour which she felt to be hers when escorting her mother through the streets, especially Church Street with its long, busy hill, because every one saw you in Church Street.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  The phrase is literally translated as the son of man . We are so used to hearing that phrase applied to Jesus that we tend always to take it to refer to him. But, in Hebrew, a son of man always means simply a man . We find, for instance, that, in the Revised Standard Version, in the book of the prophet Ezekiel, more than eighty times God addresses Ezekiel as son of man . ‘Son of man, set your face toward Jerusalem’ (Ezekiel 21:2). ‘Son of man, prophesy, and say …’ (Ezekiel 30:2). In the psalm quoted here, the two parallel phrases which we have translated as ‘What is man that you remember him?’ and ‘Or the son of man that you visit him?’ are different ways of saying exactly the same thing. The psalm is a great lyric cry of the glory of human life as God meant it to be. It is, in fact, an expansion of the great promise of God at creation in Genesis 1:28, when he said to Adam: ‘Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ The glory of human beings, incidentally, is even greater than the Authorized Version would lead us to understand. It tells us that God has made them ‘a little lower than the angels’ (Psalm 8:5). That is a correct translation of the Greek but not of the original Hebrew . In the original Hebrew, it is said that they are made a little lower than the Elohim ; and Elohim is the regular word for God . What the psalmist really wrote was that human beings had been made ‘little less than God’, which, in fact, is the translation of the Revised Standard Version. So, this psalm sings of the glory of human beings, who were made little less than divine and whom God meant to have dominion over everything in the world. But, the writer to the Hebrews goes on, the situation with which we are confronted is very different. Men and women were meant to have dominion over everything – but they have not . They are creatures who are frustrated by their circumstances, defeated by their temptations and surrounded by their own weaknesses. The ones who should be free are bound; the ones who should be rulers are slaves. As the writer G. K. Chesterton said, whatever else is or is not true, this one thing is certain: we are not what we were meant to be. The writer to the Hebrews goes further. Into this situation came Jesus Christ. He suffered and he died; and, because he suffered and died, he entered into glory. And that suffering and death and glory are all for us, because he died to make us what we ought to be.