African Guardian of Souls, Drunk with rum, Feasting on a strange cassava, Yielding to new words and a weak palabra Of a white-faced sardonic god— Grins, cries Amen, Shouts hosanna.
Where this text comes from
First published in Cane (1923). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]
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/jean-toomer_cane, conversion.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).
Earlier sources (2)
This poem as JSON or plain text . Line anchors #L1–#L8.
Cite this poem
Jean Toomer (1894–1967).
“Conversion.” First published in Cane (1923).
Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/jean-toomer/conversion/.
Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.
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