No Images

By William Waring Cuney 1906–1976

She does not know

her beauty,

she thinks her brown body

has no glory.

If she could dance

naked

under palm trees

and see her image in the river,

she would know.

But there are no palm trees

on the street,

and dish water gives back

no images.

William Waring Cuney, “No images” from Storefront Church, published in 1973 by Paul Breman Limited. After exhaustive efforts have been made to identify and contact a rights holder, this material is believed to be in the public domain. If you have information about rights to this work, please email us at mail@poetryfoundation.org.

Source: Storefront Church (1973)

Biography

William Waring Cuney was born in Washington, DC, in 1906. He attended Howard University and graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania before deciding to pursue a career in singing; he attended the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and from there went to Rome. Cuney never performed professionally and eventually switched his focus to writing. When he was eighteen, his poem “No Images” won a prize in the . . .

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