"The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till"

by Gwendolyn Brooks

(from Selected Poems, 1963)

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after the murder,
after the burial

Emmett's mother is a pretty-faced thing;

the tint of pulled taffy.

She sits in a red room,

drinking black coffee.

She kisses her killed boy.

And she is sorry.

Chaos in windy grays

through a red prairie.

 

From Gwendolyn Brooks, Selected Poems Copyright © 1963, by Gwendolyn Brooks.

Last modified September 30, 2002

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