Hello Friends,
Today’s poem by Gladys May Casely Hayford was published way back in 1927, when it wasn’t always easy to get away with Sapphic undertones. Almost all of the women poets of this era had gone out of print when a University of Nebraska English professor Maureen Honey revived them in the 1989 anthology Shadowed Dreams: Women’s Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, so we have her to thank for being able to read this poem today.
Enjoy,
Ællen
Today’s poem by Gladys May Casely Hayford was published way back in 1927, when it wasn’t always easy to get away with Sapphic undertones. Almost all of the women poets of this era had gone out of print when a University of Nebraska English professor Maureen Honey revived them in the 1989 anthology Shadowed Dreams: Women’s Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, so we have her to thank for being able to read this poem today.
Enjoy,
Ællen
The Serving Girl
The calabash wherein she served my food
Was smooth and polished as sandalwood;
Fish, as white as the foam of the sea,
Peppered, and golden fried for me.
She brought palm wine that carelessly slips
From the sleeping palm tree’s honeyed lips.
But who can guess, or even surmise,
The countless things she served with her eyes?
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The calabash wherein she served my food
Was smooth and polished as sandalwood;
Fish, as white as the foam of the sea,
Peppered, and golden fried for me.
She brought palm wine that carelessly slips
From the sleeping palm tree’s honeyed lips.
But who can guess, or even surmise,
The countless things she served with her eyes?
■