Assignment 2: Harlem Renaissance Poets
Demetria Davenport
HUM 112
Dr. Jeff Kersh

Countee Cullen (1903-1996)
“Heritage” (1925)

What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?
So I lie, who all day long
Want no sound except the song
Sung by wild barbaric birds
Goading massive jungle herds,
Juggernauts of flesh that pass
Trampling tall defiant grass
Where young forest lovers lie,
Plighting troth beneath the sky,
So I lie, who always hear,
Though I cram against my ear
Both my thumbs, and keep them there,
Great drums throbbing through the air,
So I lie, whose fount of pride,
Dear distress and joy allied,
Is my somber flesh and skin,
With the dark blood dammed within
Like great pulsing tides of wine
That, I fear, must burst the fine
Channels of the chafing net
Where they surge and form and fret.
Africa? A book one thumbs
Listlessly, till slumber comes,
Unremembered are the bats
Circling through the night, her cats
Crouching in the river reeds,
Stalking gentle flesh that feeds,
By the river brink; no more
Does the bugle throated roar
Cry that monarch claws have leapt
From the scabbards where they slept,
Silver snakes that once a year
Doff the lovely coats you wear,
Seek no covert in your fear
Lest a mortal eye should see;
What’s you nakedness to me?
Here no leprous flower rear
Fierce corollas in the air;
Here no bodies’ sleek ad wet,
Dripping mingled rain and sweat,
Tread the savage measures of
Jungle boys and girls in love,
What is last year’s snow to me,
Last year’s anything? The tree
Budding yearly must forget
How it past arose or set-
Bough and blossom, flower, fruit,