“Yet Do I Marvel”

By Countee Cullen

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,

And did He stoop to quibble could tell why

The little buried mole continues blind,  

Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,

Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus

Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare  

If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus

To struggle up a never-ending stair.  

Inscrutable His ways are, and immune  

To catechism by a mind too strewn  

With petty cares to slightly understand  

What awful brain compels His awful hand.  

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:  

To make a poet black, and bid him sing!