Paul Laurence Dunbar

ROBERT HAYDEN PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR (for Herbert Martin) We lay red roses on his grave, speak sorrowfully of him as if he were but newly dead. And so it seems to us this raw spring day, though years before we two were l)orn he was a young poet dead. Poet of our youthhis cri du coeur our own, his verses "in a broken tongue" b)eguiling as an elder l)rother's antic lore. Their sad blackface lilt and croon survive him like the happy look (subliminal of victim, dying man) a summer's tintypes hold. The roses flutter in the wind; we weight their stems with stones, then drive away. 65 0