STRANGE AND DEFIANT LOVERS THAT WE WERE
I liked this poem by African American poet, critic, and scholar, Sterling Brown. A weird pastiche on the Shakespearean sonnet, I guess, and on the nature of poetry and human love. Love Susie x
Challenge
I said, in drunken pride of youth and you
That mischief-making Time would never dare
Play his ill-humored tricks upon us two,
Strange and defiant lovers that we were.
I said that even Death, Highwayman Death,
Could never master lovers such as we,
That even when his clutch had throttled breath,
My hymns would float in praise, undauntedly.
I did not think such words were bravado.
Oh, I think honestly we knew no fear,
We loved each other so.
And thus, with you believing me, I made
My prophecies, rebellious, unafraid . . . .
And that was foolish, wasn’t it, my dear?
Sterling A. Brown