Robert Hayden

I He dines alone surrounded by reflections of himself. Then after sleep and benzedrine descends the Cinquecento stair his magic wrought from hypochondria of the well- to-do and nagging deathwish of the poor; swirls on smiling genuflections of his liveried chauffeur into a crested lilac limousine, the cynosure of mousey neighbors tittering behind Venetian blinds and half afraid of him and half admiring his outrageous flair. II Meanwhile his mother, priestess in gold lamé, precedes him to the quondam theater now Israel Temple of the Highest Alpha, where the bored, the sick, the alien, the tired await euphoria. With deadly vigor she prepares the way for mystery and lucre. Shouts in blues-contralto, ”He’s God’s dictaphone of all-redeeming truth. Oh he’s the holyweight champeen who’s come to give the knockout lick to your bad luck; say he’s the holyweight champeen who’s here to deal a knockout punch to your hard luck.“ III Reposing on cushions of black leopard skin, he telephones instructions for a long slow drive across the park that burgeons now with spring and sailors. Peers questingly into the green fountainous twilight, sighs and turns the gold-plate dial to Music For Your Dining-Dancing Pleasure. Smoking Egyptian cigarettes rehearses in his mind a new device that he must use tonight. IV Approaching Israel Temple, mask in place, he hears ragtime allegros of a ”Song of Zion“ that becomes when he appears a hallelujah wave for him to walk. His mother and a rainbow-surpliced cordon conduct him choiring to the altar-stage, and there he kneels and seems to pray before a lighted Jesus painted sealskin-brown. Then with a glittering flourish he arises, turns, gracefully extends his draperied arms: “Israelites, true Jews, O found lost tribe of Israel, receive my blessing now. Selah, selah.” He feels them yearn toward him as toward a lover, exults before the image of himself their trust gives back. Stands as though in meditation, letting their eyes caress his garments jewelled and chatoyant, cut to fall, to flow from his tall figure dramatically just so. Then all at once he sways, quivers, gesticulates as if to ward off blows or kisses, and when he speaks again he utters wildering vocables, hypnotic no-words planned (and never failing) to enmesh his flock in theopathic tension. Cries of eudaemonic pain attest his artistry. Behind the mask he smiles. And now in subtly altering light he chants and sinuously trembles, chants and trembles while convulsive energies of eager faith surcharge the theater with power of their own, a power he has counted on and for a space allows to carry him. Dishevelled antiphons proclaim the moment his followers all day have hungered for, but which is his alone. He signals: tambourines begin, frenetic drumbeat and glissando. He dances from the altar, robes hissing, flaring, shimmering; down aisles where mantled guardsmen intercept wild hands that arduously strain to clutch his vestments, he dances, dances, ensorcelled and aloof, the fervid juba of God as lover, healer, conjurer. And of himself as God.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. breaking. / When In A Ballad of Remembrance(1962), the line between these two lines reads: "and smell the iron and velvet bloom of heat." While this line was deleted, the version in A Ballad of Remembrance is still a sonnet. There are other variants between both versions; mostly relating to where the line breaks. When breaking. / When In A Ballad of Remembrance(1962), the line between these two lines reads:"and smell the iron and velvet bloom of heat." While this line was deleted, the version in A Ballad of Remembrance is still a sonnet. There are other variants between both versions; mostly relating to where the line breaks. the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had who had In A Ballad of Remembrance: who’d driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere austere Grave, sober; and lacking adornment and lonely offices?

I. Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing and the night cold and the night long and the river to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoning and blackness ahead and when shall I reach that somewhere morning and keep on going and never turn back and keep on going Runagate Runagate Runagate Many thousands rise and go many thousands crossing over O mythic North O star-shaped yonder Bible city Some go weeping and some rejoicing some in coffins and some in carriages some in silks and some in shackles Rise and go or fare you well No more auction block for me no more driver’s lash for me If you see my Pompey, 30 yrs of age, new breeches, plain stockings, negro shoes; if you see my Anna, likely young mulatto branded E on the right cheek, R on the left, catch them if you can and notify subscriber. Catch them if you can, but it won’t be easy. They’ll dart underground when you try to catch them, plunge into quicksand, whirlpools, mazes, turn into scorpions when you try to catch them. And before I’ll be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave North star and bonanza gold I’m bound for the freedom, freedom-bound and oh Susyanna don’t you cry for me Runagate Runagate II. Rises from their anguish and their power, Harriet Tubman, woman of earth, whipscarred, a summoning, a shining Mean to be free And this was the way of it, brethren brethren, way we journeyed from Can’t to Can. Moon so bright and no place to hide, the cry up and the patterollers riding, hound dogs belling in bladed air. And fear starts a-murbling, Never make it, we’ll never make it.Hush that now, and she’s turned upon us, levelled pistol glinting in the moonlight: Dead folks can’t jaybird-talk, she says; you keep on going now or die, she says. Wanted     Harriet Tubman     alias The General alias Moses     Stealer of Slaves In league with Garrison     Alcott     Emerson Garrett     Douglas     Thoreau     John Brown Armed and known to be Dangerous Wanted     Reward     Dead or Alive Tell me, Ezekiel, oh tell me do you see mailed Jehovah coming to deliver me? Hoot-owl calling in the ghosted air, five times calling to the hants in the air. Shadow of a face in the scary leaves, shadow of a voice in the talking leaves: Come ride-a my train Oh that train, ghost-story train through swamp and savanna movering movering, over trestles of dew, through caves of the wish, Midnight Special on a sabre track movering movering, first stop Mercy and the last Hallelujah.

Lord’s lost Him His mockingbird, His fancy warbler; Satan sweet-talked her, four bullets hushed her. Who would have thought she’d end that way? Four bullets hushed her. And the world a-clang with evil. Who’s going to make old hardened sinner men tremble now and the righteous rock? Oh who and oh who will sing Jesus down to help with struggling and doing without and being colored all through blue Monday? Till way next Sunday? All those angels in their cretonne clouds and finery the true believer saw when she rared back her head and sang, all those angels are surely weeping. Who would have thought she’d end that way? Four holes in her heart. The gold works wrecked. But she looks so natural in her big bronze coffin among the Broken Hearts and Gates-Ajar, it’s as if any moment she’d lift her head from its pillow of chill gardenias and turn this quiet into shouting Sunday and make folks forget what she did on Monday. Oh, Satan sweet-talked her, and four bullets hushed her. Lord’s lost Him His diva, His fancy warbler’s gone. Who would have thought, who would have thought she’d end that way?

I Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy: Sails flashing to the wind like weapons, sharks following the moans the fever and the dying; horror the corposant and compass rose. Middle Passage: voyage through death to life upon these shores. “10 April 1800— Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says their moaning is a prayer for death, ours and their own. Some try to starve themselves. Lost three this morning leaped with crazy laughter to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under.” Desire, Adventure, Tartar, Ann: Standing to America, bringing home black gold, black ivory, black seed. Deep in the festering hold thy father lies, of his bones New England pews are made, those are altar lights that were his eyes.

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all, when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole, reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians: this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world where none is lonely, none hunted, alien, this man, superb in love and logic, this man shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric, not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone, but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

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.