Cupid's Smile II

A speaker runs out into the rain to feel it and stays outside for a while. When the rain stops, the sun comes out, and he calls it Cupid’s smile. Nothing more happens, and the poem needs nothing more. At four lines, Cupid’s Smile II is one of the shortest poems in The Rose That Grew from Concrete. It appears in the second section, “Nothing Can Come Between Us”, right after Jada and The Tears in Cupid’s Eyes. It carries no dedication.

From Cupid’s Tears to a Smile

The poem thrives on contrast and on the punchline in its final line. Cupid’s Smile II unfolds its impact primarily in context: directly preceding it is The Tears in Cupid’s Eyes, dedicated “4 Jada”. There, it rains on the day the beloved leaves, and the rain is Cupid’s tears.

Cupid’s Smile II turns this image around. The same rain read as grief there becomes a prelude to light here. Whether Tupac wrote the two poems as a pair or the editors placed them side by side is not documented. The “II” in the title suggests that there was a first version that was not published.

Cupid Returns in Several Poems

Cupid appears several times in Tupac’s poems: in Hours Pass By he weeps until the lovers meet again, and in What I See! he plants a seed. The figure suits a nineteen-year-old who experimented with classical imagery in his writing circle and translated it into his own style.

Like the other poems, this text was written between 1989 and 1991 according to Afeni Shakur’s preface; no more specific date is known. An overview of the entire book and all the poems is provided in the introduction.