Look heah! ’Splain to me de reason Why you said to Squire Lee, Der wuz twelve ole chicken thieves In dis heah town, includin’ me. Ef he tole you dat, my brudder, He said sump’n dat warn’t true; W’at I said wuz dis, dat der wuz Twelve, widout includin’ you.
Oh! … !—
Where this text comes from
First published in Fifty Years & Other Poems (1917). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1] [2]
Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-12.
Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/james-weldon-johnson_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).
Earlier sources (5)
This poem as JSON or plain text . Line anchors #L1–#L9.
Cite this poem
James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938).
“An Explanation.” First published in Fifty Years & Other Poems (1917).
Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-weldon-johnson/an-explanation/.
Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.
More by James Weldon Johnson