I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.
This moment occurs at the end of the poem "Incident" and comes after the speaker has been called a racial slur by a young white boy. It is a terrible moment in which the speaker tries to be friendly to the boy, and he responds automatically with hate. The speaker states that it is all he recalls of the trip, despite seeing "the whole of Baltimore," because that moment was scarring enough to erase all of his other memories of the city. His excitement about the visit to this city crumbled in the face of a painful encounter with racism. This passage highlights the way in which racial trauma dominates memory, making it impossible to focus on anything but the harm inflicted in that moment.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
Cullen opens "Yet Do I Marvel" with an assertion of his belief in the existence and the inherent goodness of a Christian God. He then immediately begins to undercut this idea. He describes various animals and people that seem to be made to suffer. He offers the example of the blind mole and Sisyphus. Still, he says he is able to accept these examples as mysteries beyond his comprehension. However, in these final two lines, he mentions his connection to this struggle, saying it is the only thing at which he truly "marvels." He comments that it is strange that God would make him a Black poet and demand that he "sing" because he has endured many hardships as a result of his race. He finds a kind of cruelty in what he views as God's deliberate creation of obstacles in his life.
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?
This passage highlights the speaker's ambivalence towards his African heritage. He debates how he is supposed to feel an inherent connection to a culture from which history has largely alienated him. He evokes images of "spicy grove" and "cinnamon tree" but adds that he is "three centuries removed," unable to access the appreciation his ancestors had for these scenes. He is unable to definitively say how he relates to Africa. Here, Cullen is writing about a subject that was commonly discussed by artists of the Harlem Renaissance, as they were uncertain about how strongly they were supposed to link their work to African culture.
So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,
And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.
These lines occur at the end of "From the Dark Tower" and represent the speaker's tenuous expression of hope for the future. This moment happens after the speaker has described the beauty and importance of the darkness in the sky. They write about how some flowers only grow in the shade. Here they are stating that they, members of the Black community, will wait in the darkness, caring for their seeds. Like the flowers that only grow in the dark, these seeds may be initially overlooked but may blossom in time. It is a hopeful note in that the speaker is saying these seeds symbolize a possible future in which Black workers can enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Her mother pawned her wedding ring
To lay her out in white;
She'd be so proud she'd dance and sing
To see herself tonight.
These lines are from the second and final stanza of "A Brown Girl Dead." They depict the gesture of care—pawning her wedding ring—that the deceased girl's mother made to ensure her daughter's funeral was appropriately done. By stating that the girl would "dance and sing" if she were alive to see it, the speaker shows that while death has cleaved this mother and daughter apart, this effort still carries weight and meaning. It represents the final act of love the mother can give her daughter.
