Octavia Beatrice Wynbush - 2 Short Poems (1925-1930)

Forgotten Poems #80

    
              —: The Song of the Cotton (1925) :—

       I sing of gleaming balls of down, rising
            from dark green stems,
       Of bronzed men and women with tired
            arms, and aching backs,
       Heart breaking toil that binds and chains
            the mind—
       My burden is, “Work, work, from rise
            to set of sun.”
       I sing of mellow song.
       Sweet, dulcet, mournful melodies, born
            'mid my blossoms white,
       Woven into the softness of my down
       A people's cries, sweet in their sadness.
       I sing of tears that damp my silken balls,
       Hot tears of hope deferred, “that maketh
            sick the heart.”
       Deep sighs, and unvoiced prayers,
            unuttered yearnings—
       All these are woven into my song.
    

    
              —: Beauty (1930) :—

       'Tis wondrous strange in what things men
            find beauty.
       One sees it in the sun kissing the sleeping
            hills awake;
       Another in the moon, trailing paths to
            fairy-land across slow moving water.
       This man finds beauty in first youth;
            his friend, in mature woman.
       But beauty lurks for me in black, knotted hands,
       Hands consecrated to toil that those who come
       Behind them may have tender, shapely hands;
       And beautiful are shoulders with bearing
            heavy burdens stooped
       That younger shoulders may grow straight
            and proud.
       And faces, dark, sad faces, too, are beautiful—
       The patient, wistful faces of the many
       Who have viewed their lands of promise
            from afar,
       Turned from the mountain to the lonely path
       Of sober duty, and gazed on
       The promised land no more.
       'Tis wondrous strange
       In what things men find beauty.
    

Octavia Beatrice Wynbush (1898-1972) was born in Washington, Pennsylvania, and lived most of her later life in Kansas City; “In 1920 she obtained a BA in German from Oberlin College, and in 1934 she received an MA in English from Columbia University in New York.” (Maureen Honey, Shadowed Dreams, 2006) Wynbush published just two poems in the African American arts and culture magazine Opportunity, but was well-known for her short-stories, and as a member of the ‘Harlem Renaissance’, alongside poets like Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Bennett, Lewis Alexander, Georgia Douglas Johnson, et al. She would go on to be an educator, teaching at colleges in New Orleans, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Pine Bluff. In 1936, she settled in Kansas City, Missouri, and took up a teaching position at Lincoln High School.

Wynbush was also an oral historian, and in 1940 travelled around numerous states, interviewing dozens of former slaves, and collecting photographs, adding to the significant work of preserving the experiences of otherwise unrecorded African American histories.

        
              —: After Octavia Wynbush :—
                          By Dick Whyte

              I.

       O tree,
       beneath whom
       i have made
       a poem
       out of branches
       tell me
       of the time
       before birds
       feared us

              II.

       knowing
       everything
       that ever
       needed to be
       ever
       said
       had already
       been so said
       to death,

              III.

       and yet . . .
       and yet . . .
       and yet . . .
        

Forgotten Poets Presents:

Forgotten Poems, a living anthology of obscure and out-of-print poetry from the late-1800s and early-1900s. Explore the archives:

More African American poetry . . .

More poems about race . . .

More feminist poetry . . .

More poems about song . . .

More poems about mountains . . .