Face

Hair⁠—
silver-gray,
like streams of stars,
Brows⁠—
recurved canoes
quivered by the ripples blown by pain,
Her eyes⁠—
mist of tears
condensing on the flesh below
And her channeled muscles
are cluster grapes of sorrow
purple in the evening sun
nearly ripe for worms.

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, face.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1#L13.

Cite this poem

Jean Toomer (1894–1967). “Face.” First published in Cane (1923). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/jean-toomer/face/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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