The City's Love

by

Claude McKay

For one brief golden moment rare like wine, 

The gracious city swept across the line; 

Oblivious of the color of my skin, 

Forgetting that I was an alien guest, 

She bent to me, my hostile heart to win, 

Caught me in passion to her pillowy breast; 

The great, proud city, seized with a strange love, 

Bowed down for one flame hour my pride to prove.

Credits:  Claude McKay was a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance.  A prolific writer, McKay published five novels, among them Home to Harlem.  The above poem can be found at Poets.Org.  For a more extensive biography, go to Poetry Foundation.