All at once within our imaginations we fin-
ger the sharpness of a smooth pine needle, the
hardness of a caked hoof-print in the grainy
earth, and the softness of a rabbit’s fur. Simulta-
neously, we dive into five levels of space in
nature: the sun above the earth, the pine needles
in mid-air between the tree and the ground, the
needles upon the ground, the prints of the cow’s
hooves that indent the earth, and the rabbits’
homes, burrows under ground.
As we experience these varied textures and
levels of space, we concurrently taste both chro-
nological and cyclical time through samples of
motion. The always-moving earth, gyrating on
its axis and whirling about the sun, creates an
instant of dusk in our cycle of day and night. But
we know that dawn will also come, in time. The
downward fall of pine needles marks a seeming
moment of finality in nature’s cycle of birth and
death. But we know that, in time, the fallen
needles will decompose, become the soil, and
then again the tree. Contrarily, the remnants of
hoof-prints focus on the linear movement of a
cow’s passage from place to place without recur-
rence. We know the animal has wandered the
path and, with its horizontal motion, has
recorded the past in the chronology of time.
Through it all, we synchronically experience
the essence and the totality of nature at an
unconscious level. Unlike the rabbit, we are not
blind to the dynamism of light from flaming
needles that spark no fire:
A spray of pine-needles,
Dipped in western horizon gold,
...
Rabbits knew not of their falling,
Nor did the forest catch aflame.
Rather, we are cognizant of the intense light
of all time compressed into the brilliant flare of
the moment.
As a philosopher, Toomer appropriately
entitles the poem ‘‘Nullo,’’ because nothing hap-
pens, yet everythingis. As a cubist, he fittingly
expresses the heart ofCanein ‘‘Nullo,’’ for the
part is the whole, yet the whole is the part. As a
master craftsman, Toomer aesthetically portrays
nature by sketching the rabbit, a part of nature,
unaware of the dynamism within its environ-
ment, and he symbolically portrays the Black
American, a son of the soil, unaware of the
dynamism within himself.
‘‘Storm Ending’’ offers additional evidence
of a cubist at work. Toomer, like every cubist,
strives to imprint the essence and the totality of
his subject on the mind of the audience. He
endeavors to go beyond the illusion of his sub-
ject’s mere visual appearance to the reality of its
conceptual representation. Recognizing that
only deftness of form can accomplish this intent,
Toomer displays great finesse as he harnesses the
power of form and generates true cubist art in his
short lyric ‘‘Storm Ending.’’
Close scrutiny of the structure of ‘‘Storm End-
ing’’ produces two unique conceptual responses:
one in which sound, sun, and rain fall to the earth
simultaneously, and another in which only sound
and sun concurrently fall. Each is a variation of
the other; each helps to create the other; yet both
reveal the same lasting symbolic effect: Black
Americans reject their slave heritage rooted in
the soil of the South, and white Americans reject
Black Americans.
Taking note of all punctuation marks, we
discover that three fragments comprise the
poem. In the first fragment Toomer paints:
Thunder blossoms gorgeously above our
heads,
Great, hollow, bell-like flowers,
Rumbling in the wind,
Stretching clappers to strike our ears.
Here, Toomer hammers the fragment into
two visual planes: the horizontal plane of clouds,
‘‘thunder blossoms,’’ reverberating in the wind,
and the vertical sheet of sound pouring from the
clouds and resonating in our minds. Dynamic in
its fusion of sound and motion, this fragment
ironically concludes with two dots that indicate
the need for a gentle pause.
In the second fragment Toomer sketches:
Full-lipped flowers
Bitten by the sun
Bleeding rain
Dropping rain like golden honey—
Again Toomer flattens the fragment into
two definite planes: the horizontal plane of the
sun, layers of space above the clouds, and the
vertical (or even diagonal) plane of rays ‘‘like
golden honey’’ radiating from the sun, rupturing
the clouds, and dripping to the earth. The
absence of punctuation within the fragment
evokes a third plane, that of a vertical slice of
rain bleeding from the clouds as does the sheet of
sound in the first fragment.
With the falling of rain from the clouds
and warm rays from the sun, we intuitivelyStorm Ending