Explication of "Yet Do I Marvel" by Countee Cullen

“Yet do I Marvel” by Countee Cullen is an interesting poem written before the Civil Rights Movement when Blacks were still extremely outcast. Most of the poem consists of allusions to attributes and puzzles of God. He knows from Scripture that “God is good,” but it puzzles him that so many things appear wrong or out of place with this fact. He starts with a petty trouble, the blindness of moles. Personally, moles live a pretty good lifestyle underground, so they do not really need eyes. Do worms have eyes, but he then moves all the way to the ultimate quandary of the inevitable death and decay of all flesh that is supposed to be in the image of God. Can it get any more severe than that. Cullen makes his final point even stronger by conjuring problems even more severe even though he blends different allusions to do so. He brings out the harrowing torture that Tantalus and Sisyphus from Greek mythology suffer. Tantalus is terrible thirsty and submerged in water that recedes whenever he tries to drink and has fruit above him with which he longs to satisfy his hunger, but the branch always moves beyond his reach. Sisyphus must roll a boulder constantly up a slope without ever reaching the top because the bolder always rolls back down, at which point, he must start over. After all of these examples, his main point is outlined with the understatement that it is a “curious thing” for God to choose him to be a poet and Black since it was hard for Blacks to be successful in such positions. In the context, the allusions give his struggle an epic grandeur and a colossal scale, which it probably does not deserve as hard as his task may be, but it certainly highlights his troubles in a way that may catch the attention of unsympathetic people. Throughout the poem, Cullen underscores the idea that it is not his place to know the answers to these questions because his mind is corrupted and his body and hands as a result are also corrupted. At the beginning, he points out that God could tell why, but the poet does not have the right to demand for God to stoop to that point. The whole poem could possibly be a parallel to real life if God is compared to the white people who mistreat Blacks without stooping to tell them why. Thus, he vents himself in the poem with little hope that anything will be changed even with his flattery.