We Wear the Mask
Paul Laurence Dunbar
We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask. We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!
Of note
In 1982, Maya Angelou recited this poem for Bill Moyers's TV series Creativity while revisiting her childhood town of Stamps, Arkansas. She said it helped her understand something she had watched as a girl in the family store: Black customers who were sassy among themselves turned meek the moment a white customer came in.
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TEXT PROVENANCE · First published 1895 in Majors and Minors · Text from The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1913), via Wikisource.
The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar
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