Black Tambourine

The interests of a black man in a cellar

Mark tardy judgment on the world's closed door.

Gnats toss in the shadow of a bottle,

And a roach spans a crevice in the floor.

Æsop, driven to pondering, found

Heaven with the tortoise and the hare;

Fox brush and sow ear top his grave

And mingling incantations on the air.

The black man, forlorn in the cellar,

Wanders in some mid-kingdom, dark, that lies,

Between his tambourine, stuck on the wall,

And, in Africa, a carcass quick with flies.