It Fades, Fades !
My Love
by Bruce Nugent
My love has hair
Like midnight,
But midnight fades to dawn.
My love has eyes
Like starlight,
But starlight fades in morn.
My love has a voice
Like dew-fall,
But dew-fall dies at a breath.
My love has love
Like life’s all,
But life’s all fades in death.
Richard Bruce Nugent was a poet, playwright, short story writer, and painter during the Harlem Renaissance movement. One of the only openly gay writers from the Harlem Renaissance, his work was frequently published in magazines and anthologies such as Fire!!, Opportunity, and Alain Locke’s The New Negro (Atheneum, 1925). He died on May 27, 1987.
A poem of love, like a finger pointing at life itself. What is life? Life is many things, as is love. Metaphor is the best that we can do to describe. (There is no explanation, so do not even try to explain.) Midnight and starlight and dew-fall and to sum up all metaphors: life’s all. However there is always the “but,” the limit to perfection. I don’t think this is a flaw, a deficit. It’s just the way of things. There is always a limit.
The upshot, the consequence is the note of sorrow, the tragedy — which is occasion for compassion, for empathy. We all, are in this life together.
*Drops of dew quickly evaporate from the surface of a Japanese maple leaf. Note the tiny iridescent fly near the top of the leaf !
