A Poem by Claude McKay
Featured in Kevin Young's New Anthology of African American Poetry
The Tropics in New York
Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root,
Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,
And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit,
Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs,
Set in the window, bringing memories
Of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills,
And dewy dawns, and mystical blue skies
In benediction over nun-like hills.
My eyes grew dim, and I could no more gaze;
A wave of longing through my body swept,
And, hungry for the old, familiar ways,
I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.
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Excerpted from African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song, edited by Kevin Young. Compilation copyright © 2020 by Library of America. Used by permission of the publisher.
Claude McKay
Claude McKay (1889–1948) b. Sunny Ville, Jamaica. Published first poetry collection, Songs of Jamaica, in 1912, the year he arrived in the U.S. Along with poetry volumes such as Harlem Shadows (1922), published novels and memoirs, including Home to Harlem (1928) and the autobiography A Long Way from Home (1937). Spent much of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe and North Africa.
