Yet Do I Marvel

I’d never heard of Countee Cullen until today.

I’m listening to an audiobook about poetry and the name of Countee Cullen of course caught my attention as I walked through a local park on my regular evening wandering (in this case post-immunisation for Covid, my second booster, and seasonal Flu). Countee Cullen, originally Countee LeRoy Porter, lived between 1903 and 1946 and achieved fame as poet, novelist and playwright and was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He was born, in all likelihood (records differ) in Kentucky, but was brought to Harlem in New York at the age of nine and was later adopted by Reverend Frederick Cullen, pastor of Salem Methodist Episcopal Church, whose name the young man took.

Here is the poem I heard in my audiobook tonight, and I wanted to share it.

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,   
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare   
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.   
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune   
To catechism by a mind too strewn   
With petty cares to slightly understand   
What awful brain compels His awful hand.   
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:   
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!