STRANGE AND DEFIANT LOVERS THAT WE WERE

STRANGE AND DEFIANT L OVERS THAT WE WEREI 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