The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou Read online

  ALSO BY MAYA ANGELOU

  And Still I Rise

  Gather Together in My Name

  The Heart of a Woman

  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

  Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water fore I Diiie

  Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well

  Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry hike Christmas

  Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?

  All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes

  I Shall Not Be Moved

  On the Pulse of Morning

  Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

  This book is dedicated

  to the great love of my life.

  Contents

  Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water fore I Diiie

  PART ONE: WHERE LOVE IS A SCREAM OF ANGUISH

  They Went Home

  The Gamut

  A Zono Man

  To a Man

  Late October

  No Loser, No Weeper

  When You Come to Me

  Remembering

  In a Time

  Tears

  The Detached

  To a Husband

  Accident

  Let's Majeste

  After

  The Mothering Blackness

  On Diverse Deviations

  Mourning Grace

  How I Can Lie to You

  Sounds Like Pearls

  PART TWO: JUST BEFORE THE WORLD ENDS

  When I Think About Myself

  On a Bright Day, Next Week

  Letter to. an Aspiring Junkie

  Miss Scarlett, Mr. Rhett and Other Latter-Day Saints

  Times-Square-Shoeshine-Composition

  Faces

  To a Freedom Fighter

  Riot: 60's

  We Saw Beyond Our Seeming

  Black Ode

  No No No No

  My Guilt

  The Calling of Names

  On Working White Liberals

  Sepia Fashion Show

  The Thirteens (Black)

  The Thirteens (White)

  Harlem Hopscotch

  Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well

  PART ONE

  Pickin Em Up and Layin Em Down

  Hereys to Adhering

  On Reaching Forty

  The Telephone

  PART TWO

  Passing Time

  Now Long Ago

  Greyday

  Poor Girl

  Come. And Be My Baby

  Senses of Insecurity

  Alone

  Communication I

  Communication II

  Wonder

  A Conceit

  PART THREE

  Request

  Africa

  America

  For Us, Who Dare Not Dare

  Lord, in My Heart

  Artful Pose

  PART FOUR

  The Couple

  The Pusher

  Chicken-Licken

  PART FIVE

  I Almost Remember

  Prisoner

  Woman Me

  JohnJ.

  Southeast Arkanasia

  Song for the Old Ones

  Child Dead in Old Seas

  Take Time Out

  Elegy

  Reverses

  Little Girl Speakings

  This Winter Day

  And Still I Rise

  PART ONE: TOUCH ME, LIFE, NOT SOFTLY

  A Kind of Love, Some Say

  Country Lover

  Remembrance

  Where We Belong, A Duet

  Phenomenal Woman

  Men

  Refusal

  Just for a Time

  PART TWO: TRAVELING

  Junkie Monkey Reel

  The Lesson

  California Prodigal

  My Arkansas

  Through the Inner City to the Suburbs

  Lady Luncheon Club

  Momma Welfare Roll

  The Singer Will Not Sing

  Willie

  To Beat the Child Was Bad Enough

  Woman Work

  One More Round

  The Traveler

  Kin

  The Memory

  PART THREE: AND STILL I RISE

  Still I Rise

  Ain't That Bad?

  Life Doesn't Frighten Me

  Bump d'Bump

  On Aging

  In Retrospect

  Just Like Job

  Call Letters: Mrs. V. B.

  Thank You, Lord

  Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?

  Awaking in New York

  A Good Woman Feeling Bad

  The Health-Food Diner

  A Georgia Song

  Unmeasured Tempo

  Amoebaeanfor Daddy

  Recovery

  Impeccable Conception

  Caged Bird

  Avec Merciy Mother

  Arrival

  A Plagued Journey

  Starvation

  Contemporary Announcement

  Prelude to a Parting

  Martial Choreograph

  To a Suitor

  Insomniac

  Weekend Glory

  The Lie

  Prescience

  Family Affairs

  Changes

  Brief Innocence

  The Last Decision

  Slave Coffle

  Shaker; Why Don't You Sing?

  My Life Has Turned to Blue

  I Shall Not Be Moved

  Worker's Song

  Human Family

  Man Bigot

  Old Folks Laugh

  Is Love

  Forgive

  Insignificant

  Love Letter

  Equality

  Coleridge Jackson

  Why Are They Happy People?

  Son to Mother

  Known to Eve and Me

  These Yet to Be United States

  Me and My Work

  Changing

  Born That Way

  Televised

  Nothing Much

  Glory Falls

  London

  Savior

  Many ama More

  The New House

  Our Grandmothers

  Preacher, Doni Send Me

  Fightin'Was Natural

  Loss of Love

  Seven Women's Blessed Assurance

  In My Missouri

  They Ask Why

  When Great Trees Fall

  On the Pulse of Morning

  To AMBER SAM and the ZORROMAN

  They Went Home

  They went home and told their wives,

  that never once in all their lives,

  had they known a girl like me,

  But … They went home.

  They said my house was licking clean,

  no word I spoke was ever mean,

  I had an air of mystery,

  But … They went home.

  My praises were on all men's lips,

  they liked my smile, my wit, my hips,

  they'd spend one night, or two or three.

  But …

  The Gamut

  Soft you day, be velvet soft,

  My true love approaches,

  Look you bright, you dusty sun,

  Array your golden coaches.

  Soft you wind, be soft as silk,

  My true love is speaking.

  Hold you birds, your silver throats,

  His golden voice I'm seeking.

  Come you death, in haste, do come,

  My shroud of black be weaving,

  Quiet my heart, be deathly quiet,

  My true love is leaving.

  A Zorro Man
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  Here

  in the wombed room

  silk purple drapes

  flash a light as subtle

  as your hands before

  love-making

  Here

  in the covered lens

  I catch a

  clitoral image of

  your general inhabitation

  long and like a

  late dawn in winter

  Here

  this clean mirror

  traps me unwilling

  in a gone time

  when I was love

  and you were booted and brave

  and trembling for me.

  To a Man

  My man is

  Black Golden Amber

  Changing.

  Warm mouths of Brandy Fine

  Cautious sunlight on a patterned rug

  Coughing laughter, rocked on a whorl of French tobacco

  Graceful turns on woolen stilts

  Secretive?

  A cat's eye.

  Southern. Plump and tender with navy-bean sullenness

  And did I say “Tender”?

  The gentleness

  A big cat stalks through stubborn bush

  And did I mention “Amber”?

  The heatless fire consuming itself.

  Again. Anew. Into ever neverlessness.

  My man is Amber

  Changing

  Always into itself

  New. Now New.

  Still itself.

  Still.

  Late October

  Carefully

  the leaves of autumn

  sprinkle down the tinny

  sound of little dyings

  and skies sated

  of ruddy sunsets

  of roseate dawns

  roil ceaselessly in

  cobweb greys and turn

  to black

  for comfort.

  Only lovers

  see the fall

  a signal end to endings

  a gruffish gesture alerting

  those who will not be alarmed

  that we begin to stop

  in order simply

  to begin

  again.

  No Loser, No Weeper

  “I hate to lose something,”

  then she bent her head,

  “even a dime, I wish I was dead.

  I can't explain it. No more to be said.

  ‘Cept I hate to lose something.

  “I lost a doll once and cried for a week.

  She could open her eyes, and do all but speak.

  I believe she was took, by some doll-snatching sneak.

  I tell you, I hate to lose something.

  “A watch of mine once, got up and walked away.

  It had twelve numbers on it and for the time of day.

  I'll never forget it and all I can say

  Is I really hate to lose something.

  “Now if I felt that way ‘bout a watch and a toy,

  What you think I feel ‘bout my lover-boy?

  I ain't threatening you, madam, but he is my evening's joy.

  And I mean I really hate to lose something.”

  When You Come to Me

  When you come to me, unbidden,

  Beckoning me

  To long-ago rooms,

  Where memories lie.

  Offering me, as to a child, an attic,

  Gatherings of days too few,

  Baubles of stolen kisses,

  Trinkets of borrowed loves,

  Trunks of secret words,

  I CRY.

  Remembering

  Soft grey ghosts crawl up my sleeve

  to peer into my eyes

  while I within deny their threats

  and answer them with lies.

  Mushlike memories perform

  a ritual on my lips

  I lie in stolid hopelessness

  and they lay my soul in strips.

  In a Time

  In a time of secret wooing

  Today prepares tomorrow's ruin

  Left knows not what right is doing

  My heart is torn asunder.

  In a time of furtive sighs

  Sweet hellos and sad goodbyes

  Half-truths told and entire lies

  My conscience echoes thunder.

  In a time when kingdoms come

  Joy is brief as summer's fun

  Happiness its race has run

  Then pain stalks in to plunder.

  Tears

  Tears

  The crystal rags

  Viscous tatters

  of a worn-through soul.

  Moans

  Deep swan song

  Blue farewell

  of a dying dream.

  The Detached

  We die,

  Welcoming Bluebeards to our darkening closets,

  Stranglers to our outstretched necks,

  Stranglers, who neither care nor

  care to know that

  DEATH IS INTERNAL.

  We pray,

  Savoring sweet the teethed lies,

  Bellying the grounds before alien gods,

  Gods, who neither know nor

  wish to know that

  HELL IS INTERNAL.

  We love,

  Rubbing the nakednesses with gloved hands,

  Inverting our mouths in tongued kisses,

  Kisses that neither touch nor

  care to touch if

  LOVE IS INTERNAL.

  To a Husband

  Your voice at times a fist

  Tight in your throat

  Jabs ceaselessly at phantoms

  In the room,

  Your hand a carved and

  Skimming boat

  Goes down the Nile

  To point out Pharaoh's tomb.

  You're Africa to me

  At brightest dawn.

  The Congo's green and

  Copper's brackish hue,

  A continent to build

  With Black Man's brawn.

  I sit at home and see it all

  Through you.

  Accident

  Tonight

  when you spread your pallet

  of magic,

  I escaped.

  Sitting apart,

  I saw you grim and unkempt.

  Your vulgarness

  not of living,

  your demands

  not from need.

  Tonight

  as you sprinkled your brain-dust

  of rainbows,

  I had no eyes.

  Seeing all

  I saw the colors fade

  and change.

  The blood, red dulled

  through the dyes,

  and the naked

  Black-White truth.

  Let's Majeste

  I sit a throne upon the times

  when Kings are rare and

  Consorts

  slide into the grease of scullery maids.

  So gaily wave a crown of light

  (astride the royal chair) that blinds

  the commoners who genuflect and cross their fingers.

  The years will lie beside me

  on the queenly bed.

  And coupled we'll await

  the ages’ dust to cake my lids again.

  And when the rousing kiss is given,

  why must it always be a fairy, and

  only just a Prince?

  After

  No sound falls

  from the moaning sky

  No scowl wrinkles

  the evening pool

  The stars lean down

  A stony brilliance

  While birds fly.

  The market leers

  its empty shelves

  Streets bare bosoms

  to scanty cars

  This bed yawns

  beneath the weight

  of our absent selves.

  The Mothering Blackness

  She came home running

  b
ack to the mothering blackness

  deep in the smothering blackness

  white tears icicle gold plains of her face

  She came home running

  She came down creeping

  here to the black arms waiting

  now to the warm heart waiting

  rime of alien dreams befrosts her rich brown face

  She came down creeping

  She came home blameless

  black yet as Hagar's daughter

  tall as was Sheba's daughter

  threats of northern winds die on the desert's face

  She came home blameless

  On Diverse Deviations

  When love is a shimmering curtain

  Before a door of chance

  That leads to a world in question

  Wherein the macabrous dance

  Of bones that rattle in silence

  Of blinded eyes and rolls

  Of thick lips thin, denying

  A thousand powdered moles,

  Where touch to touch is feel

  And life a weary whore

  I would be carried off, not gently

  To a shore,

  Where love is the scream of anguish

  And no curtain drapes the door.

  Mourning Grace

  If today I follow death,

  go down its trackless wastes,

  salt my tongue on hardened tears

  for my precious dear time's waste

  race

  along that promised cave in a headlong

  deadlong

  haste,

  Will you

  have

  the

  grace

  to mourn for

  me?

  How I Can Lie to You

  now thread my voice

  with lies

  of lightness

  force within

  my mirror eyes

  the cold disguise

  of sad and wise

  decisions.

  Sounds Like Pearls

  Sounds

  Like pearls