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A bird flew out at the break of day From the nest where it had curled, And ere the eve the bird had set Fear on the kings of the world. The first tree it lit upon Was green with leaves unshed; The second tree it lit upon Was red with apples red; The third tree it lit upon Was barren and was brown, Save for a dead man nailed thereon On a hill above a town. That night the kings of the earth were gay And filled the cup and can; Last night the kings of the earth were chill For dread of a naked man. ‘If he speak two more words,’ they said, ‘The slave is more than the free; If he speak three more words,’ they said, ‘The stars are under the sea.’ Said the King of the East to the King of the West, I wot his frown was set, ‘Lo, let us slay him and make him as dung, It is well that the world forget.’ Said the King of the West to the King of the East, I wot his smile was dread, ‘Nay, let us slay him and make him a god, It is well that our god be dead.’ They set the young man on a hill, They nailed him to a rod; And there in darkness and in blood They made themselves a god. And the mightiest word was left unsaid, And the world had never a mark, And the strongest man of the sons of men Went dumb into the dark. Then hymns and harps of praise they brought, Incense and gold and myrrh, And they thronged above the seraphim, The poor dead carpenter. ‘Thou art the prince of all,’ they sang, ‘Ocean and earth and air.’ Then the bird flew on to the cruel cross, And hid in the dead man’s hair. ‘Thou art the son of the world.’ they cried, ` ‘Speak if our prayers be heard.’ And the brown bird stirred in the dead man’s hair And it seemed that the dead man stirred. Then a shriek went up like the world’s last cry From all nations under heaven, And a master fell before a slave And begged to be forgiven. They cowered, for dread in his wakened eyes The ancient wrath to see; And a bird flew out of the dead Christ’s hair, And lit on a lemon tree.

He that had come that morning, One after the other, Over seven hills, Each of a new color, Came now by the last tree, By the red-colored valley, To a gray river Wide as the sea. There at the shingle A listing wherry Awash with dark water; What should it carry? There on the shelving, Three dark gentlemen. Might they direct him? Three gentlemen. “Cable, friend John, John Cable,” When they saw him they said, “Come and be company As far as the far side.” “Come follow the feet,” they said, “Of your family, Of your old father That came already this way.” But Cable said, “First I must go Once to my sister again; What will she do come spring And no man on her garden? She will say ‘Weeds are alive From here to the Stream of Friday; I grieve for my brother’s plowing,’ Then break and cry.” “Lose no sleep,” they said, “for that fallow: She will say before summer, ‘I can get me a daylong man, Do better than a brother.’ ” Cable said, “I think of my wife: Dearly she needs consoling; I must go back for a little For fear she die of grieving.” “Cable,” they said, “John Cable, Ask no such wild favor; Still, if you fear she die soon, The boat might wait for her.” But Cable said, “I remember: Out of charity let me Go shore up my poorly mother, Cries all afternoon.” They said, “She is old and far, Far and rheumy with years, And, if you like, we shall take No note of her tears.” But Cable said, “I am neither Your hired man nor maid, Your dog nor shadow Nor your ape to be led.” He said, “I must go back: Once I heard someone say That the hollow Stream of Friday Is a rank place to lie; And this word, now I remember, Makes me sorry: have you Thought of my own body I was always good to? The frame that was my devotion And my blessing was, The straight bole whose limbs Were long as stories— Now, poor thing, left in the dirt By the Stream of Friday Might not remember me Half tenderly.” They let him nurse no worry; They said, “We give you our word: Poor thing is made of patience; Will not say a word.” “Cable, friend John, John Cable,” After this they said, “Come with no company To the far side. To a populous place, A dense city That shall not be changed Before much sorrow dry.” Over shaking water Toward the feet of his father, Leaving the hills’ color And his poorly mother And his wife at grieving And his sister’s fallow And his body lying In the rank hollow, Now Cable is carried On the dark river; Nor even a shadow Followed him over. On the wide river Gray as the sea Flags of white water Are his company.

Then fled, O brethren, the wicked juba and wandered wandered far from curfew joys in the Dismal’s night. Fool of St. Elmo’s fire In scary night I wandered, praying, Lord God my harshener, speak to me now or let me die; speak, Lord, to this mourner. And came at length to livid trees where Ibo warriors hung shadowless, turning in wind that moaned like Africa, Their belltongue bodies dead, their eyes alive with the anger deep in my own heart. Is this the sign, the sign forepromised me? The spirits vanished. Afraid and lonely I wandered on in blackness. Speak to me now or let me die. Die, whispered the blackness. And wild things gasped and scuffled in the night; seething shapes of evil frolicked upon the air. I reeled with fear, I prayed. Sudden brightness clove the preying darkness, brightness that was itself a golden darkness, brightness so bright that it was darkness. And there were angels, their faces hidden from me, angels at war with one another, angels in dazzling combat. And oh the splendor, The fearful splendor of that warring. Hide me, I cried to rock and bramble. Hide me, the rock, the bramble cried. . . . How tell you of that holy battle? The shock of wing on wing and sword on sword was the tumult of a taken city burning. I cannot say how long they strove, For the wheel in a turning wheel which is time in eternity had ceased its whirling, and owl and moccasin, panther and nameless beast And I were held like creatures fixed in flaming, in fiery amber. But I saw I saw oh many of those mighty beings waver, Waver and fall, go streaking down into swamp water, and the water hissed and steamed and bubbled and locked shuddering shuddering over The fallen and soon was motionless. Then that massive light began a-folding slowly in upon itself, and I Beheld the conqueror faces and, lo, they were like mine, I saw they were like mine and in joy and terror wept, praising praising Jehovah. Oh praised my honer, harshener till a sleep came over me, a sleep heavy as death. And when I awoke at last free And purified, I rose and prayed and returned after a time to the blazing fields, to the humbleness. And bided my time.

After you finish your work after you do your day after you've read your reading after you've written your say – you go down the street to the hot dog stand, one block down and across the way. On a blistering afternoon in East Harlem in the twentieth century. Most of the windows are boarded up, the rats run out of a sack – sticking out of the crummy garage one shiny long Cadillac; at the glass door of the drug-addiction center, a man who'd like to break your back. But here's a brown woman with a little girl dressed in rose and pink, too. Frankfurters frankfurters sizzle on the steel where the hot-dog-man leans – nothing else on the counter but the usual two machines, the grape one, empty, and the orange one, empty, I face him in between. A black boy comes along, looks at the hot dogs, goes on walking. I watch the man as he stands and pours in the familiar shape bright purple in the one marked ORANGE orange in the one marked GRAPE, the grape drink in the machine marked ORANGE and orange drink in the GRAPE. Just the one word large and clear, unmistakeable, on each machine. I ask him : How can we go on reading and make sense out of what we read? – How can they write and believe what they're writing, the young ones across the street, while you go on pouring grape in ORANGE and orange into the one marked GRAPE –? (How are we going to believe what we read and we write and we hear and we say and we do?) He looks at the two machines and he smiles and he shrugs and smiles and pours again. It could be violence and nonviolence it could be white and black          women and men it could be war and peace or any binary system, love and hate, enemy, friend. Yes and no, be and not-be, what we do and what we don't do. On a corner in East Harlem garbage, reading, a deep smile, rape, forgetfulness, a hot street of murder, misery, withered hope, a man keeps pouring grape into ORANGE and orange into the one marked GRAPE, pouring orange into GRAPE and grape into ORANGE forever.

There’s a black wind howlin’ by Whylah Falls; There’s a mad rain hammerin’ the flowers; There’s a shotgunned man moulderin’ in petals; There’s a killer chucklin’ to himself; There’s a mother keenin’ her posied son; There’s a joker amblin’ over his bones. Go down to the Sixhiboux River, hear it cry, “Othello Clemence is dead and his murderer’s free!” O sang from Whylah Falls and lived by sweat, Walked that dark road between desire and regret. He pitched lumber, crushed rock, calloused his hands: He wasn’t a saint but he was a man. Scratch Seville shot him and emptied his skull, Tore a hole in his gut only Death could fill. Now his martyr-mother witnesses in cries Over his corpse cankered white by lilies. There’s a black wind snakin’ by Whylah Falls; There’s a river of blood in Jarvis County; There’s a government that don’t know how to weep; There’s a mother who can’t get no sleep. Go down to the Sixhiboux, hear it moan Like a childless mother far, far, from home, “There’s a change that’s gonna have to come, I said, a change that’s gonna have to come.”

Rudolph Reed was oaken. His wife was oaken too. And his two good girls and his good little man Oakened as they grew. “I am not hungry for berries. I am not hungry for bread. But hungry hungry for a house Where at night a man in bed ”May never hear the plaster Stir as if in pain. May never hear the roaches Falling like fat rain. “Where never wife and children need Go blinking through the gloom. Where every room of many rooms Will be full of room. ”Oh my home may have its east or west Or north or south behind it. All I know is I shall know it, And fight for it when I find it.“ It was in a street of bitter white That he made his application. For Rudolph Reed was oakener Than others in the nation. The agent’s steep and steady stare Corroded to a grin. Why, you black old, tough old hell of a man, Move your family in!

The ARGUMENT. A Vulgar Error having long prevailed among many Persons, who imagine Sally Salisbury the Subject of this Ballad, the Author begs leave to undeceive and assure them it has not the least allusion to her, he being a stranger to her very Name at the time this Song was composed. For as Innocence and Virtue were ever the Boundaries of his Muse, so in this little Poem he had no other view than to set forth the Beauty of a chaste and disinterested Passion, even in the lowest Class of human Life. The real Occasion was this: A Shoemaker’s ’Prentice making Holiday with his Sweet-heart, treated her with a sight of Bedlam, the Puppet-shews, the Flying-chairs, and all the Elegancies of the Moorfields: From whence proceeding to the Farthing Pye-house, he gave her a Collation of Buns, Cheesecakes, Gammon of Bacon, Stuff’d-beef, and Bottled-ale; through all which Scenes the Author dodged them (charm’d with the Simplicity of their Courtship), from whence he drew this little Sketch of Nature; but being then young and obscure, he was very much ridicul’d by some of his Acquaintance for this Performance; which nevertheless made its way into the polite World, and amply recompenced him by the Applause of the divine Addison, who was pleased (more than once) to mention it with Approbation. Of all the Girls that are so smart There’s none like pretty SALLY, She is the Darling of my Heart, And she lives in our Alley. There is no Lady in the Land Is half so sweet as SALLY, She is the Darling of my Heart, And she lives in our Alley. Her Father he makes Cabbage-nets, And through the Streets does cry ’em; Her Mother she sells Laces long, To such as please to buy ’em: But sure such Folks could ne’er beget So sweet a Girl as SALLY! She is the Darling of my Heart, And she lives in our Alley. When she is by I leave my Work, (I love her so sincerely) My Master comes like any Turk, And bangs me most severely; But, let him bang his Belly full, I’ll bear it all for SALLY; She is the Darling of my Heart, And she lives in our Alley. Of all the Days that’s in the Week, I dearly love but one Day, And that’s the Day that comes betwixt A Saturday and Monday; For then I’m drest, all in my best, To walk abroad with SALLY; She is the Darling of my Heart, And she lives in our Alley. My Master carries me to Church, And often am I blamed, Because I leave him in the lurch, As soon as Text is named: I leave the Church in Sermon time, And slink away to SALLY; She is the Darling of my Heart, And she lives in our Alley. When Christmas comes about again, O then I shall have Money; I’ll hoard it up, and Box and all I’ll give it to my Honey: And, would it were ten thousand Pounds; I’d give it all to SALLY; She is the Darling of my Heart, And she lives in our Alley. My Master and the Neighbours all, Make game of me and SALLY; And (but for her) I’d better be A Slave and row a Galley: But when my seven long Years are out, O then I’ll marry SALLY! O then we’ll wed and then we’ll bed, But not in our Alley.

1 The children of the Czar Played with a bouncing ball In the May morning, in the Czar’s garden, Tossing it back and forth. It fell among the flowerbeds Or fled to the north gate. A daylight moon hung up In the Western sky, bald white. Like Papa’s face, said Sister, Hurling the white ball forth. 2 While I ate a baked potato Six thousand miles apart, In Brooklyn, in 1916, Aged two, irrational. When Franklin D. Roosevelt Was an Arrow Collar ad. O Nicholas! Alas! Alas! My grandfather coughed in your army, Hid in a wine-stinking barrel, For three days in Bucharest Then left for America To become a king himself. 3 I am my father’s father, You are your children’s guilt. In history’s pity and terror The child is Aeneas again; Troy is in the nursery, The rocking horse is on fire. Child labor! The child must carry His fathers on his back. But seeing that so much is past And that history has no ruth For the individual, Who drinks tea, who catches cold, Let anger be general: I hate an abstract thing. 4 Brother and sister bounced The bounding, unbroken ball, The shattering sun fell down Like swords upon their play, Moving eastward among the stars Toward February and October. But the Maywind brushed their cheeks Like a mother watching sleep, And if for a moment they fight Over the bouncing ball And sister pinches brother And brother kicks her shins, Well! The heart of man is known: It is a cactus bloom. 5 The ground on which the ball bounces Is another bouncing ball. The wheeling, whirling world Makes no will glad. Spinning in its spotlight darkness, It is too big for their hands. A pitiless, purposeless Thing, Arbitrary and unspent, Made for no play, for no children, But chasing only itself. The innocent are overtaken, They are not innocent. They are their father’s fathers, The past is inevitable. 6 Now, in another October Of this tragic star, I see my second year, I eat my baked potato. It is my buttered world, But, poked by my unlearned hand, It falls from the highchair down And I begin to howl. And I see the ball roll under The iron gate which is locked. Sister is screaming, brother is howling, The ball has evaded their will. Even a bouncing ball Is uncontrollable, And is under the garden wall. I am overtaken by terror Thinking of my father’s fathers, And of my own will.

After Lorca mother’s malison The burr of the wind is seeping through the door, pink stumps of rhubarb are breaking through the soil. Though it is February I have the mind of autumn. Though it is February

“Son,” said my mother, When I was knee-high, “You’ve need of clothes to cover you, And not a rag have I. “There’s nothing in the house To make a boy breeches, Nor shears to cut a cloth with Nor thread to take stitches. “There’s nothing in the house But a loaf-end of rye, And a harp with a woman’s head Nobody will buy,” And she began to cry. That was in the early fall. When came the late fall, “Son,” she said, “the sight of you Makes your mother’s blood crawl,— “Little skinny shoulder-blades Sticking through your clothes! And where you’ll get a jacket from God above knows. “It’s lucky for me, lad, Your daddy’s in the ground, And can’t see the way I let His son go around!” And she made a queer sound. That was in the late fall. When the winter came, I’d not a pair of breeches Nor a shirt to my name. I couldn’t go to school, Or out of doors to play. And all the other little boys Passed our way. “Son,” said my mother, “Come, climb into my lap, And I’ll chafe your little bones While you take a nap.” And, oh, but we were silly For half an hour or more, Me with my long legs Dragging on the floor, A-rock-rock-rocking To a mother-goose rhyme! Oh, but we were happy For half an hour’s time! But there was I, a great boy, And what would folks say To hear my mother singing me To sleep all day, In such a daft way? Men say the winter Was bad that year; Fuel was scarce, And food was dear. A wind with a wolf’s head Howled about our door, And we burned up the chairs And sat on the floor. All that was left us Was a chair we couldn’t break, And the harp with a woman’s head Nobody would take, For song or pity’s sake. The night before Christmas I cried with the cold, I cried myself to sleep Like a two-year-old. And in the deep night I felt my mother rise, And stare down upon me With love in her eyes. I saw my mother sitting On the one good chair, A light falling on her From I couldn’t tell where, Looking nineteen, And not a day older, And the harp with a woman’s head Leaned against her shoulder. Her thin fingers, moving In the thin, tall strings, Were weav-weav-weaving Wonderful things. Many bright threads, From where I couldn’t see, Were running through the harp-strings Rapidly, And gold threads whistling Through my mother’s hand. I saw the web grow, And the pattern expand. She wove a child’s jacket, And when it was done She laid it on the floor And wove another one. She wove a red cloak So regal to see, “She’s made it for a king’s son,” I said, “and not for me.” But I knew it was for me. She wove a pair of breeches Quicker than that! She wove a pair of boots And a little cocked hat. She wove a pair of mittens, She wove a little blouse, She wove all night In the still, cold house. She sang as she worked, And the harp-strings spoke; Her voice never faltered, And the thread never broke. And when I awoke,— There sat my mother With the harp against her shoulder Looking nineteen And not a day older, A smile about her lips, And a light about her head, And her hands in the harp-strings Frozen dead. And piled up beside her And toppling to the skies, Were the clothes of a king’s son, Just my size.