Lovey, our black cook, adores me.
Lovey is skinny bones, and looks like a witch in a wrapper and her hair spiked in curl-paper;
A black Medusa, snake-topped …

“La,” says Lovey, “this here nigger works her hands off for the likes of you …”

She carries insurance for relatives and prays for their death …
She visits them in Virginia and comes back bearing in her arms a real honey-sweet luscious Virginia ham …

And it's for me …
“Ah lugged it, and wore the skin off my arm, and got a hump on my back for the likes of you” …

She adores the something mild in me, the poet, the dreamer.

She does not know me as my wife knows me …
One day I am at the telephone and suddenly a wild devilish fury possesses me,
And my speech has the lightning in it …
Primitive Lovey is caught back in the jungle: she recognizes a magic demon …
Thereafter she avoids me …

Perhaps now she really sees the soul of an artist
Possessed of heaven and hell.