To One on Her Twenty-Fifth Birthday
Rent from DeepDyve- To One on Her Twenty-Fifth Birthday
When I consult the maps of chaotic earth, The sunken continents and healing seas, The wheeling stars of cold, uncertain birth Which heard their flint in stale geographies, I wonder how the contour of you came to be, Whence the grace that feeds on limbs of power And wraps its dancing flesh, warm and free, Within the flame of a speechless hour. Oh, you are past all chart and staid design, Estranged from piety, in passion sprung, A pulse that leaps beyond the arbitrary line And beats till life’s most secret growth is sung: You, whose exploding universe may sear the night With death, yet not contain your soaring light! [End Page 57]
James R. Stokely Jr. (1913–1977) grew up in Newport, Tennessee, the grandson of Anna Rorex Stokely, who with her sons founded the Stokely Brothers Canning Company, Newport’s biggest employer. He chose to become a poet rather than to go into the family business. As the husband of Wilma Dykeman, he co-authored several of her books, including Neither Black Nor White, which won the Sidney Hillman Award for the best book on race relations of 1957.
