Poems

After the Winer

By Claude McKay

Some day, when trees have shed their leaves
       And against the morning’s white
The shivering birds beneath the eaves
       Have sheltered for the night,
We’ll turn our faces southward, love,
       Toward the summer isle
Where bamboos spire the shafted grove
       And wide-mouthed orchids smile.

And we will seek the quiet hill
       Where towers the cotton tree,
And leaps the laughing crystal rill,
       And works the droning bee.
And we will build a cottage there
       Beside an open glade,
With black-ribbed blue-bells blowing near,
       And ferns that never fade.