Love Song for Alex, 1979

By Margaret Walker 1915–1998 Margaret Walker

My monkey-wrench man is my sweet patootie;

the lover of my life, my youth and age.

My heart belongs to him and to him only;

the children of my flesh are his and bear his rage

Now grown to years advancing through the dozens

the honeyed kiss, the lips of wine and fire

fade blissfully into the distant years of yonder

but all my days of Happiness and wonder

are cradled in his arms and eyes entire.

They carry us under the waters of the world

out past the starposts of a distant planet

And creeping through the seaweed of the ocean

they tangle us with ropes and yarn of memories

where we have been together, you and I.

Source: This is My Century: New and Collected Poems (University of Georgia Press, 1989)

Biography

When For My People by Margaret Walker won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award in 1942, "she became one of the youngest Black writers ever to have published a volume of poetry in this century," as well as "the first Black woman in American literary history to be so honored in a prestigious national competition," noted Richard K. Barksdale in Black American Poets between Worlds, 1940-1960. Walker's first novel, Jubilee, is . . .

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