August, 'twas the twenty-fifth,
Seventeen hundred forty-six,
The Indian did ambush lay,
Some very valient men to slay,
Samual Allen like a hero fought,
And though he was so brave and bold,
His face no more shall we behold.
Eleazer Hawks was killed outright,
Before he had time to fight,--
Before he did the Indians see,
Was shot and killed immediately.
Oliver Amsden he was slain,
Which caused his friends much grief and pain
Simeon Amsden they found dead
Not many rods distant from his head.
Adonijah Gillett, we do here,
Did loose his life which was so dear.
John Sadler fled across the water,
And thus caped the dreadful slaughter.
Eunice Allen see [sic] the Indians coming,
And hopes to save herself by running;
And had not her petticoats stopped her,
The awful creatures had not catched [sic] her.
Nor tommy hawked her on the head.
Young Samual Allen, Oh lack-a-day!
Was taken and carried to Canada.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Norton Antology
Taught my benighted soul to understand of Literature by
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too: Women
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our stable race with scornful eye,
"There colour is diabolic die."
Rembember, Cristians, Negroes, black as Cain,
May be refun'd, and join th' angelic train.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
An Ante-Bellum Sermon Paul Dunbar 1896
We is gathered hyeah, my brothahs, compare this dialect piece
In dis howlin' wildaness, with Dunbar's "We Wear the Mask"
Fu' to speak some words of comfo't
To each othah in distress.
An' we chooses fu' ouah subjic'
Dis--we'll 'splain it by an' by;
"An' de Lawd said, 'Moses, Moses",'
An' de man said, 'Hyeah am I'"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
But Aunt Judy was not unsung. The people had not forgotten how
she fixed Horace Carter.
Horace was a husband eternally searching for love outside his home. He
spent every cent he could rake and scrape on his clothes, on hair pomades and
walking sticks, and the like.
When he brutally impressed his wife with the fact that there was
nothing, absolutely nothing she could do about it, she said to him one Sunday
morning in desperaration: 'Horace, if you don't mind your ways I'm going to
take your case to Aunt Judy.'"
He laughed. "Tell her, sell her; turn her up and smell her." He went on
about his business.
She did tell Aunt Judy and it is said she laid a hearing on Mr Horace.
He had a new suit in the post office. (It is customary to order clothes C.O.D.
from mail-order houses, and they remain in the post office until paid out.) He
was bragging about how swell he would look in it. An out-of-town girl was
coming over the first Sunday after he got his new suit out to help him switch
it around. That was the next Sunday after he had laughed at his wife and Aunt
Judy.
So he got his suit out. He had a hat, shoes and everything to match.
He put the suit on and strolled over to the depot to meet the train,
but before it came, he took sick. He seemed to be vomiting so violently that it
was running out of his nose as well as his mouth. His clothes were ruined and a
great swarm of flies followed him. Before he could reach home, it was
discovered that he was defecating through his mouth and nose. This kept up,
off and on, for six months. He couldn't tell when it would start, nor stop. So
he kept himself hidden most of the time.
Aunt Judy said,"The dirty puppy! I'll show him how to talk under my
clothes! Turn me up and smell me, hunh? I'll turn him up, and they'll sho smell
him."
They say he paid her to take it off him after a while.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
O black and unknown bards of long ago,
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
How, in your darkness did you come to know
The power and the beauty of the mistrel's lyre?
Who first from the midst his bonds lifted his eyes?
Who first from out the still watch, lone and long,
Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise
Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song?
Hearth of what slave poured out such melody
As "Steal Away to Jesus"? On its strains
His spirit must have nightly floated free,
Though still about his hands he felt his chains.
Who heard the great "Jordan roll"? Whose starward eye
Saw chariot "swing low"? And who was he
That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh,
"Nobody Knows de Trouble I See"?
What merely living clod, what captive thing,
Could up toward God through all its darkness grope,
And finfd within its deadened heart to sing
These songs of sorrow, love, and faith, and hope?
How did it catch that subtle undertone,
That note in music heard not with the ear?
How sound the elusive reed so seldom blown,
Which stirs the soul or melts the heart to tears.
Not that great German master in his dream
Of harmonies that thundered amongst the stars
At the creation, ever heard a theme
Nobler than "Go down, Moses." Mark its bars,
How like the mightly trumpet-call they stir
The blood. Such are the notes that men have sung
Going to valorous deeds; such tones there were
That helped make history when Time was young.
There is a wide, wide wonder in it all,
That from degraded rest servile toil
The fiery spirit of the seer should call
These simple childer of the sun and soil.
O black slave singers, gone, forgot, unfamed,
You--you alone, of all the long, long line
Of those who've sung untaught, unknown, unnamed,
Have stretched out upward, seeking the divine.
You sang not deeds of heroes or of kings;
No chant of bloody war, no exulting paean
Of arms-won triumphs; but your humble strings
You touched in the chord with music empyrean.
You sang far better than you knew; the songs
That for your listeners' hungry hearts sufficed
Still live--but more than this to you belongs;
You sang a race from wood to stone to Christ.
-------------------------
Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of hope that the present has brought us.
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come overa way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
Good of our silient years,
Though who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearths drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee
Shadow beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our God,
True to our native land.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, you wake up in the mornin', hear the ding dong ring,
You go a-marchin' to the table, see the same damn thing.
Well, it's on a one table, knife a, fork, an' a pan,
An' if you say anything about it, you're in trouble with the man.
Chourus:
Let the Midnight Special shine its ligt on me,
Let the Midnigth Special shine its ever-lovin' light on me.
If you go to Houston, you better walk right;
You better not stagger, you better not fight,
Or Sheriff Benson will arrest you, he will carry you down.
If the jury finds you guilty, you'll be penitentiary bound.
Yonder comes li'l Rosi. How in the worl' do you know?
I can tellher by her apron and the dress she wears
Umbrella on her shoulder, piece o' paper in her han'.
Well, I heard her tell the captain: "I want my man"
I'm gwine away to leave you, an' my time ain't long.
The man in gonna call me an' I'm a-goin home.
Then I'll be done all my grievin', whoopin', holl'in, an' a-cryin',
Then I'll be done all my studyin' 'bout my grieg long gone.
Well, the biscuits on the table, just as hard as a rock.
If you try to swallow them, break a convict's heart.
My sister wrote a letter, my mother wrote a card,
"If you want to come an' see us, you'll have t' ride the rods.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Naked woman, black women
Cloth with your colour which is life, with your form which is beauty!
In your shadow I have grown up; the gentleness of your hands was laid over my
eyes.
And Now, high up on the sun-backed pass, at the heart of summer, at the
heart of noon, I come upon you, my Promised Land,
And your beauty strikes me to the heart like the flash of an eagle.
Naked women, dark women
Firm-fleshed ripe fruit, sombre raptures of black wine, mouth making
lyrical my mouth
Savannah stretching to clear horizens, savannah shuddering beneath the East
Wind's eager caresses
Carved tom-tom, taut tom-tom, muttering under the Conqueror's fingers
Your solemn contalto voice is the spiritual song of the Beloved.
Naked woman, dark woman
Oil that no breath ruffles, calm oil on the athlete's flanks, on the flanks of
the Prices of Mali
Gazelle limbed in Paradise, petals are stars on the night of your skin
Delights of the mind, the glinting of red gold against your water skin
Under the shadow of your hair, my care is lightened by neighbouring suns
of your eyes.
Naked woman, black women,
I sing your beauty that passes, the form that I fix in the Eternal,
Before jealous Fate turn you to ashes to feed the roots of life.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Latin women pray
In incense churches
They pray in Spanish to an Anglo God
With Jewish heritage.
And this Great White Father
Impertubable in his marble pedestal
Looks down upon his brown daughters
Votive candles shinning like lust
In his all seeing eyes
Unmoved by their persistent prayers.
Yet year after year
Before his image they kneel
Margarita Josefina Maria and Isabel
All fervently hoping
That if not omnipotent
At least he be bilingual.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
i am a twentieth centrury welfare recipient
moonlighting in the sun as a latero
a job invented by national state laws
designed to recycle aluminum cans
returned to consumer's acid laden
gatric inflammation pituitary glands
coca diet rites low cal godsons
of artificial flavored malignant
indigestions somewhere down the line
of a cancerous cell
i collect garbage cans in outdoor facilities
congested with putrid residudes
my hands shelving themselves
openning plastic bags never knowing
what they'll encounter
several times a day i touch evil rituals
cut throats of chickens
tongues of poised rats
salivating my index finger
smellls of month old rotton foods
next to pamper's diarrhea
dry blood infectious deseases
hypodermic needles tissued with
heroin water drops pilfered in
slimy greases hazardous waste materials
but i cannot use rubber gloves
they undermine my daily profits
i am a twentieth century welfare receipient
moonlighting in the day as a latero
that is the only opportunity i have
to make it big in america
some day i might become experienced enough
to offer technical assistance
to other lateros
i am thinking of publishing
my own guide to latero's collection
and a latero union offering
medical dental benefits
i am a twentieth century welfare recepient
moonlighting in the night as a latero
i am concidered some kind of expert
at collecting cans during fifth avenue parades
i can now hire workers at twenty
five cents an hour guarenteed salary
and fifty per cent two and one half cents
profit on each can collected.
i am a twentieth century welfare recipient
moonlighting in midnight as a latero
i am becoming a entrepreneur
an american sucess story
i have hired bag ladies to keep peddlers
from my territories
i have read in some guide to sucess
that in order to get rich
to make it big
i have to sacrifice myself
moonlighting until dawn by digging
deeper into the extra can
margin of profit
i am on my way up the opportunistic
ladder of sucess
in ten years i will quit welfare
to become a legitimate businessman
i'll soon become a latero executive
with corporate conglomerate intents
god bless america
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
por que why not
no entrar just go
a cualquier into any
casa de fisherman's
pescador house
y decir: and say:
"ya llegue" " I'm home"
una vez and once seated
sentados at our
a nuestras ease
anchas sigh:
suspirar "it's a long
"es una larga story..."
historia..."
---------------------------
hoy today
lo compruebo it's real
lo padezco: and hurts:
dondequiera I am
extranjero a foreigner
soy everywhere
---------------------------
Lamentario Lamentary
es triste how sad
ser vaso to be a glass
y nunca and never
llenarse be filled
ser puerta a door
y siempre and stay
quedarse always
trancada locked up
ser cama a bed
sentirse that's
mortaja a deathbed
no lecho not a nest
es triste how sad
ser uno to be oneself
y nunca and never
sumar dos add up to two
ser ave a bird
sin nido without a nest
ser santo a saint
sin vela without a candle
ser solo to be alone
y vivir and live
sonando dreaming
abrazos embraces
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Para la familia Arias
We come and we go
But within limits,
Fixed by a law
that is not ours;
We have in common
the experience of love
------------------------------------------------------------------------
At the factory I worked
In the fleck of rubber, under the press
Of an oven yellow with flame,
Until the border patrol opened
Their vans and my boss waved for us to run.
"Over the fence, Soto," he shouted,
And I shouted that I was an American.
"No time for lies," he said, and passes
A dollar in my palm, hurrying me
Through the back door.
Since I was on his time, I ran
And became the wag to a short tail of Mexicans--
Ran past the amazed crowds that lined
The street and blurred like photographs, in rain.
I ran from that industrial road to the soft
Houses where people paled at the turn of an autumn sky.
What could I do but yell vivas
To baseball, milkshakes, and those sociologists
Who would clock me
As I jog into the next century
On the power of a great, silly grin.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
In my land there are no distictions.
The barbed wire politics of oppression
have been torn down long ago. The only reminder
of past battles, lost or won, is a slight
rutting in the fertile fields.
In my land
people write poems about love,
full of nothing but contented childlike syllables.
Everyone reads Russian short shories and weeps.
There are no boundries.
There is no hunger, no
complicated famine or greed.
I am not a revolutionary.
I don't even like political poems.
Do you think I can believe in a war between the races?
I can deny it. I can forget about it
when I'm safe
living on my own continent of harmony
and home, but I am not
there
I believe in relolution
because everywhere the crosses are burning
sharp-shooting goose-steppers round every corner,
there are snippers in the schools...
(I know you don't believe this.
You think this is nothing
but a faddish exaggeration. But they
are not shooting at you.)
I'm marked by the color of my skin.
The bullets are discrete and designed
to kill slowly.
They are aimeing at my children.
These are the facts.
Let me show you my wounds: my stumbling mind, my
"excuse me" tongue, and this
nagging preoccupation
with the feeling of not being good enough.
These bullets bury deeper than logic.
Racism is not intellectual
I can not reason these scars away.
Outside my door
there is a real enemy
who hates me.
who yearns to dance on rooftops
to wisper delicate lines about joy
and the blessing of human understanding.
I try. I go to my land, mt tower of words and
bolt the door, but the typewriter doesn't fade out
the sounds of blasting and muffled outrage.
Every day I am deluged with reminders
that this is not
my land
and this is my land
I do not believe in the war between the races
but in this country
there is war.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
When we left for Kansas with a great herd of cattle,
ah, what a long trail it was! I was not sure I would survive.
The caporal would tell us, as if he was going to cry,
"Watch out for that bunch of steers; don't let them get past you.
Ah, what a good horse I had! He did nothing but gallop
And, ah, what a violent cloudburst! I was not sure I would come back.
Some of us asked for cigarettes, others wanted something to eat
and the caporal would tell us, "so be it, it can't be helped."
By the pond at Palomas a vicious steer left the herd.
and the caporal lassoed it on his honey-colored horse.
Go tell the caporal that a vaquero has been killed;
all he left was his leather jacket hanging on the rails of the corral
We got to the Salado River, and we swam our horses across;
an American was saying, "Those men are as good as drowned."
I wonder what the man thought, that we came to learn, perhaps
why, we're from the Rio Grande, where the good swimmers are from.
And then Kansas came in sight, and the caporal tells us,
"We have finally made it, we'll soon have them in the corral."
Back again in San Anonio, we all brought ourselves good hats,
and this is the end of the singing of the stanzas about the trail drivers.
-------
Cuando salimos pa' Kiansis
con una grande partida
ah, que camino tan largo!
no contaba con mi vida
Nos decia el caporal,
como queriendo llorar:
--Alla va la novillada
no me la dejen pasar.
Ah, que caballo tan bueno!
todo se le iba en correr
y, ah, que fuerre aguacerazo!
no contabe yo en volver.
Unos pedian cigarro
otros pedian que comer,
y el caporal nos decia:
--Sea por Dios, que hemos de hacer.--
En el charco de Palomas
se cortoun novillo bragado
y el caporal lo lazo (Orginal Spanish ballad)
en su caballo melado
Avisenlt al caporal
que un vaquero se mato
en las trancas del corral
nomas la cuera dejo
Llegamos al Rio Satado
y nos tiramos a nado
decia un americano:
--Eros hombres ya se ahogaron
Pues que pensaria ese hombre
que venimos a esp'rimentar,
si somos del Rio Grande,
de los buenos pa'nadar.
Y le dimos vista a Kianis
y nos dice el caporal:
--Ora si somas de vida,
ya vamos a hacer corral--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Most late summer evenings
my dog sits about the door and howls,
I toss under a full moon,
admire the hair on my legs, under my arms.
By the day geese eat our grain
and tolerate our tresspassing
They look to the sky
far into light
a V of honkers
follow their hearts
to the northland
When it rains,
we strip and run through trees
our bodies free to dance,
and in the night
I'll make a song that satisfies
like no other lover,
and when sleep comes, I dream
of shuffling through the forest,
liking bark and stones,
floor wet with leaf and pine,
growling over a bed of boughs,
breasts hanging to my cubs' mouths
I,
the women who wakes in my house
to make morning coffee,
to butter toast,
I look at the sky
far into light
a V of honkers
follow their hearts
to the northland
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rain smell comes with the wind
out of the southwest.
Smell of sand dunes
tall grass glistening
in the rain.
Warm raindrops that fall easy
(this woman)
The summer is born.
Smell of her breathing new life
small gray toads on damp sands
(this woman)
whispering to dark wide leaves
white moon blossoms dripping
tracks in the sand.
Rain smell
I am full of hunger
deep and longing to touch
wet tall grass, green and strong beneath.
This women loved a man
ans she breathed to him
her damp earth song
I am haunted by this story
I remember it in cottonwood leaves
their fragrance in the shade.
I remember it in the blue sky
when the rain smell comes with the wind.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
My people in boxcarsmy people my pain
united by the window steam
of lamb stew cooking
and the metal
of your walls,
four floors with cracks and crickets,
your tin roofs
full of holes;
that rain you prayed for
thousands of years
comes now
when you live
in a world
of water.
So remember
the sun
remember it was not easy
the gentile sun
of August mornings
remember it
as you pray today
for the rain
below the mesas.
the moisure
in your fields.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Men smile like they know everything
but walking in slant heel boots
their butts show they are tense.
Dark shirts.
Blue fire
puts out the sun. Rock buts
are clenched metal fists.
The earth is wounded
and bleeds.
Pray to Jesus.
An explotion could knock us all
to our knees
while the bosses stretch out,
white ridge of backbone
in the sun
We're full of bread and gas,
getting fat on the outside
while inside we grow thin.
The earth is wounded
and will not heal.
Night comes down like a big blackbird
with blue flame that never sleeps
and spreads its wings around us.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
a woman can't survive
by her own breath
alone
she must know
the voices of mountains
she must recognize
the foreverness of blue sky
she must flow
with the elusive _SOE_
bodies
of the night wind women
who will take her into
her own self
look at me
i am not a separate woman
i am continuance
of blue sky
i am the throat
of the sandia mountains
a night wind woman
who burns
with every breath
she takes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
We learn too late the useless way light leaves
footprints of its own. We traveled miles to Kilgore
in the submarine closeness of a car. Sand hills
recalling the sea. A coyote slipped across the road
before we knew. Night, the first skin around him.
He was coming from the river
where laughter calls out fish. Quietly a heavery wind
breaks against cedar. He doubled back,
curious, to meet the humming moons we rode
in this gully, without grass or stars. Our footprinrs
were foreign to him. He understood the light
and paused before the right front wheel, a shadow _SOE_
of the mineral earth, pine tar in his fur.
Such dogs avoid our eyes, yet he recognized and held
my gaze. A being both so terrible and shy
it made my blood desperate
for the space he lived in:
broad water cutting terraced canyons,
and ice gleaming under hawthorne like a floor of scales.
Thick river, remember we were light thanking light,
slow music rising. Trees perhaps, or my own voice
out of tune. I danced a human claim for him
in this gully. No stars. He slipped
by us, old as breath, moving in the rushing dark
like moonlight through tamarack,
wave on wave of unknown country.
Crazed, I can't get close enough
to this tumble wild and tangled miricle.
Night is the first skin around me.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Because we live in the browning season
the heavy air blocking our breath, _SOE_
and in this time when living
is only survival, we doubt the voices
that come shadowed on the air,
that weave within our brains
certain thoughts, a motion that is soft,
imperceptible, a twilight rain,
soft feather's fall, a small body
dropping into its nest, rustling, murmuring,
settling in for the night.
Because we live in the hardedged season,
where the plastic brittle and gleaming shines
and in this space that is cornered and angled,
we do not notice wet, moist, the significant
drops falling in perfect sheres
that are certain measures of our monds;
almost invisible, those tears,
soft as dew, fragile, that cling to leaves,
petals, roots, gentle and sure,
every morning.
We are the women of the daylight; of clocks and steel
foundries, of drugstores and streetlights,
of superhighways that slice our days in two
Wrapped around in glass and steel we ride
our lives; behind dark glasses we hide our eyes,
our thoughts, shaded, seem obscure, smoke
fills our minds, wisky husks our songs,
polyester cuts our bodies from our breath,
our feet from welcoming stones of earth.
Our dreams are pale memories of themselves,
and nagging doubt is the false measure of our days.
Even so, the spirit voices are singing,
their thoughts are dancing in the dirty air.
Their feet though the cement, the asphalt
delighting, still they weave dreams upon our
shadowed skulls, if we could listen.
If we could hear.
Let's go then. Let's find them. Let's
ride the midnight, the early dawn. Feel the wind
striding through our hair. Let's dance
the dance of feathers, the dance of birds.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
/pre>
You ask me, my brother, when will man reach
perfection. Hear my answer:
Man approaches perfection when he
feels that he is in an infinite space and a sea
without shore.
An everlasting fire, an unquenchable
light.
A calm wind or a raging tempest, a thundering sky
or a rainy heaven,
A singing brook or a wailing rivulet, a tree abloom
in Spring, or a naked sammpling
in Autumn,
A rising mountain or a secending valley,
a fertile plain or a desert.
When man feels all these, he has already
reached halfway to perfection. To attain his goal
he must then perceive
that he is child dependent upon his mother,
a father responsible for his family,
A youth lost in love,
An ancient wrestling against his past,
A worshipper in his temple, a criminal in
prison
A scholar amidst his parchements.
An ignorant soul stumbling between the darkness of his
night and the obscurity of his day,
A nus suffering bewteen the flowers of her faith and
the thisles of her loneiness,
A prostitute caught between the fangs of her
eweakness and the claws of her needs,
A poor man trapped between his bitterness and
his submission,
A rich man between his greed and his conscience,
A poet between the mist of his twilight and the rays of his dawn.
can experience, see, and understand
things can reach perfection and
be a shadow of God's Shadow.
--------------------------------------------------------------