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I am the Smoke King I am black! I am swinging in the sky, I am wringing worlds awry; I am the thought of the throbbing mills, I am the soul of the soul-toil kills, Wraith of the ripple of trading rills; Up I’m curling from the sod, I am whirling home to God; I am the Smoke King I am black. I am the Smoke King, I am black! I am wreathing broken hearts, I am sheathing love’s light darts; Inspiration of iron times Wedding the toil of toiling climes, Shedding the blood of bloodless crimes— Lurid lowering ’mid the blue, Torrid towering toward the true, I am the Smoke King, I am black. I am the Smoke King, I am black! I am darkening with song, I am hearkening to wrong! I will be black as blackness can— The blacker the mantle, the mightier the man! For blackness was ancient ere whiteness began. I am daubing God in night, I am swabbing Hell in white: I am the Smoke King I am black. I am the Smoke King I am black! I am cursing ruddy morn, I am hearsing hearts unborn: Souls unto me are as stars in a night, I whiten my black men—I blacken my white! What’s the hue of a hide to a man in his might? Hail! great, gritty, grimy hands— Sweet Christ, pity toiling lands! I am the Smoke King I am black.

Pour O pour that parting soul in song, O pour it in the sawdust glow of night, Into the velvet pine-smoke air tonight, And let the valley carry it along. And let the valley carry it along. O land and soil, red soil and sweet-gum tree, So scant of grass, so profligate of pines, Now just before an epoch’s sun declines Thy son, in time, I have returned to thee. Thy son, I have in time returned to thee. In time, for though the sun is setting on A song-lit race of slaves, it has not set; Though late, O soil, it is not too late yet To catch thy plaintive soul, leaving, soon gone, Leaving, to catch thy plaintive soul soon gone. O Negro slaves, dark purple ripened plums, Squeezed, and bursting in the pine-wood air, Passing, before they stripped the old tree bare One plum was saved for me, one seed becomes An everlasting song, a singing tree, Caroling softly souls of slavery, What they were, and what they are to me, Caroling softly souls of slavery.

Sometimes I, I go about pitying Myself While I am carried by the wind Across the sky.

I sing of Morrisville (if you call this cry a song). I (if you call this painful voice by that great name) sing the poverty of my region and of the wrong end of Morrisville. You summer people will say that all its ends are wrong, but there, right there, the very end of the wrong end— a house with windows sagging, leaning roadward as in defense or maybe defiance next to the granite ledge, our cliff of broken stone that shoulders our dilapidated one-lane iron bridge. Who lives here? I don’t know. But they (Hermes reward them) made this extraordinary garden, geraniums, petunias and nasturtiums planted in every crevice and all the footholds of the cliff. And then they painted the cliff-face, painted the old stone; no design, just swatches of color, bold rough splashes irregularly, garish orange and livid blue. Is it fluorescent, do these stones glow in the dark? Maybe. I only know they glow in the day, so vivid I stopped my car, whereupon two others came inquiring also, two crows in the broken spars of the white pine tree, cawing above the house. Why had those who inhabited this corner of poverty painted the stones? Was it that the flowers in living bravery nevertheless made too meager a show for the ruined cliff? Or did they think to bring art to nature, somehow to improve this corner of ugliness? For my part I thought how these colors were beautiful and yet strange in their beauty, ugly colors, garish orange, livid blue; they reminded me of those Spanish cemeteries I saw in New Mexico, tin mirrors and plastic flowers in the desert. Then I knew why the stones had been painted: to make reparation, such as the poor might make, whose sorrow had been done here, this desecration. Is not this the burden of all poor lands everywhere, the basis of poverty? A spoiled land makes spoiled people. The poor know this. I guess the crows know too, because off they flew, cawing above the bridge and the slashed hills surrounding Morrisville. I started my car and drove out on the iron bridge which rumbled its sullen affirmation. And I sang as I sing now (if you care to call it song) my people of Morrisville who live where all the ends are wrong.

We swing ungirded hips, And lightened are our eyes, The rain is on our lips, We do not run for prize. We know not whom we trust Nor whitherward we fare, But we run because we must Through the great wide air. The waters of the seas Are troubled as by storm. The tempest strips the trees And does not leave them warm. Does the tearing tempest pause? Do the tree-tops ask it why? So we run without a cause 'Neath the big bare sky. The rain is on our lips, We do not run for prize. But the storm the water whips And the wave howls to the skies. The winds arise and strike it And scatter it like sand, And we run because we like it Through the broad bright land.

When the long, long day is over, and the Big Boss gives me my pay, I hope that it won't be hell-fire, as some of the parsons say. And I hope that it won't be heaven, with some of the parsons I've met — All I want is just quiet, just to rest and forget. Look at my face, toil-furrowed; look at my calloused hands; Master, I've done Thy bidding, wrought in Thy many lands — Wrought for the little masters, big-bellied they be, and rich; I've done their desire for a daily hire, and I die like a dog in a ditch. I have used the strength Thou hast given, Thou knowest I did not shirk; Threescore years of labor — Thine be the long day's work. And now, Big Master, I'm broken and bent and twisted and scarred, But I've held my job, and Thou knowest, and Thou wilt not judge me hard. Thou knowest my sins are many, and often I've played the fool — Whiskey and cards and women, they made me the devil's tool. I was just like a child with money; I flung it away with a curse, Feasting a fawning parasite, or glutting a harlot's purse; Then back to the woods repentant, back to the mill or the mine, I, the worker of workers, everything in my line. Everything hard but headwork (I'd no more brains than a kid), A brute with brute strength to labor, doing as I was bid; Living in camps with men-folk, a lonely and loveless life; Never knew kiss of sweetheart, never caress of wife. A brute with brute strength to labor, and they were so far above — Yet I'd gladly have gone to the gallows for one little look of Love. I, with the strength of two men, savage and shy and wild — Yet how I'd ha' treasured a woman, and the sweet, warm kiss of a child! Well, 'tis Thy world, and Thou knowest. I blaspheme and my ways be rude; But I've lived my life as I found it, and I've done my best to be good; I, the primitive toiler, half naked and grimed to the eyes, Sweating it deep in their ditches, swining it stark in their styes; Hurling down forests before me, spanning tumultuous streams; Down in the ditch building o'er me palaces fairer than dreams; Boring the rock to the ore-bed, driving the road through the fen, Resolute, dumb, uncomplaining, a man in a world of men. Master, I've filled my contract, wrought in Thy many lands; Not by my sins wilt Thou judge me, but by the work of my hands. Master, I've done Thy bidding, and the light is low in the west, And the long, long shift is over ... Master, I've earned it — Rest.

(from Macbeth ) Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, In the caldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg and howlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble. Cool it with a baboon's blood, Then the charm is firm and good.

The wind blew high, the waters raved, A ship drove on the land, A hundred human creatures saved Kneel’d down upon the sand. Three-score were drown’d, three-score were thrown Upon the black rocks wild, And thus among them, left alone, They found one helpless child. A seaman rough, to shipwreck bred, Stood out from all the rest, And gently laid the lonely head Upon his honest breast. And travelling o’er the desert wide It was a solemn joy, To see them, ever side by side, The sailor and the boy. In famine, sickness, hunger, thirst, The two were still but one, Until the strong man droop’d the first And felt his labours done. Then to a trusty friend he spake, “Across the desert wide, O take this poor boy for my sake!” And kiss’d the child and died. Toiling along in weary plight Through heavy jungle, mire, These two came later every night To warm them at the fire. Until the captain said one day, “O seaman good and kind, To save thyself now come away, And leave the boy behind!” The child was slumbering near the blaze: “O captain, let him rest Until it sinks, when God’s own ways Shall teach us what is best!” They watch’d the whiten’d ashy heap, They touch’d the child in vain; They did not leave him there asleep, He never woke again.

Let me call a ghost, Love, so it be little: In December we took No thought for the weather. Whom now shall I thank For this wealth of water? Your heart loves harbors Where I am a stranger. Where was it we lay Needing no other Twelve days and twelve nights In each other’s eyes? Or was it at Babel And the days too small We spoke our own tongue Needing no other? If a seed grow green Set a stone upon it That it learn thereby Holy charity. If you must smile Always on that other, Cut me from ear to ear And we all smile together.

I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught a little silver trout. When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire a-flame, But something rustled on the floor, And someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair Who called me by my name and ran And faded through the brightening air. Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.