Song of the Moon by Claude McKay




The moonlight breaks upon the city's domes,
And falls along cemented steel and stone,
Upon the grayness of a million homes,
Lugubrious in unchanging monotone.
Upon the clothes behind the tenement,
That hang like ghosts suspended from the lines,
Linking each flat to each indifferent,
Incongruous and strange the moonlight shines.

There is no magic from your presence here,
Ho, moon, sad moon, tuck up your trailing robe,
Whose silver seems antique and so severe
Against the glow of one electric globe.

Go spill your beauty on the laughing faces
Of happy flowers that bloom a thousand hues,
Waiting on tiptoe in the wilding spaces,
To drink your wine mixed with sweet drafts of dews.



Biography: Claude McKay (1889-1948)

Claude McKay, born Festus Claudius McKay in Sunny Ville, Jamaica, became the
first black to receive the medal of the Jamaican Institute of Arts and Sciences in
1912 after publishing two books of poems. The money from the award enabled
him to go to the United States to study at the Tuskeegee Institute and Kansas
State College. In 1914 he arrived in Harlem, supporting himself as a waiter
while publishing poetry and reviews regularly in New York magazines. He lived
in England from 1919 to 1921, where his work was well-received. After a short
period in the U.S. he traveled throughout Europe and Africa for nearly a decade.
He returned to Harlem in 1934 but wrote very little in his later years, finishing
his autobiography in 1937. McKay's poem 'If We Must Die' was
read by Winston Churchill to the British people as a rallying cry during
World War II. McKay died in Chicago in 1948.

McKay's early books were about his love of his fellow Jamaican workers
and contempt for the racism of that society. His fourth book of poetry,
Harlem Shadows, inaugurated the Harlem Renaissance. McKay's
willingness to speak directly and at length against racial oppression
inspired a generation of writers.

His books of poetry include Constab Ballads (Watts, 1912), Songs of
Jamaica (Gardner, 1912), Spring in New Hampshire (Richards, 1920),
Harlem Shadows (Harcourt, 1922), Selected Poems of Claude McKay
(Twayne, 1953), and The Passion of Claude McKay: Selected Poetry
and Prose 1912-1948 (Schocken, 1973). His books of fiction include
the novels Home to Harlem (Harper, 1928), Banjo: A Story without
a Plot (Harper, 1929), Banana Bottom (Harper, 1933), and the short
story collection Gingertown (Harper, 1932). He also wrote an
autobiography, A Long Way from Home (Furman, 1937), and a book
of essays, Harlem: Negro Metropolis (Dutton, 1940). McKay has won
the Harmon Foundation Award for distinguished literary achievement
from the NAACP in 1929, and the James Weldon Johnson Literary
Guild award in 1937.