Poet of the week - Gwendolyn Brooks

the sonnet-ballad
Gwendolyn Brooks

Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
They took my lover's tallness off to war,
Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess
What I can use an empty heart-cup for.
He won't be coming back here any more.
Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew
When he went walking grandly out that door
That my sweet love would have to be untrue.
Would have to be untrue. Would have to court
Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange
Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort)
Can make a hard man hesitate - and change.
And he will be the one to stammer, "Yes."
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?


From "Appendix to The Anniad: leaves from a loose-leaf
war diary" in Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks, published
by Harper. Copyright © 1949 by Gwendolyn Brooks. All rights reserved.

Read more about Gwendolyn Brooks at The Academy of American Poets website and Modern American Poetry. Listen to Brooks reading two of her poems on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.

(Our opinion: Brooks should have been a Poet Laureate.)