Carolina Chansons: Legends of the Low Country — Modern Philosopher; Upstairs-Downstairs; Hag-hollerin' Time; Macabre in Macaws; Gamesters All; Eclipse
H.
A.
MODERN PHILOSOPHER
They fight your battles for you every day, The zealous ones, who sorrow in your life.
Undaunted by a century of strife, With urgent fingers still they point the way To drawing rooms, in decorous array, And moral Heavens where no casual wife May share your lot; where dice and ready knife Are barred; and feet are silent when you pray.
But you have music in your shuffling feet, And spirituals for a lenient Lord, Who lets you sing your promises away.
You hold your sunny corner of the street, And pluck deep beauty from a banjo chord: Philosopher whose future is today!
D. H.
UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS
The judge, who lives impeccably upstairs With dull decorum and its implication, Has all his servants in to family prayers, And edifies _his_ soul with exhortation.
Meanwhile his blacks live wastefully downstairs;
Not always chaste, they manage to exist With less decorum than the judge upstairs, And find withal a something that he missed.
This painful fact a Swede philosopher, Who tarried for a fortnight in our city, Remarked, one evening at the meal, before We paralyzed him silent with our pity-- Saying the black man living with the white Had given more than white men could requite.
H.
A.
HAG-HOLLERIN' TIME
Black Julius peered out from the galley fly;
Behind Jim Island, lying long and dim;
An infra owl-light tinged the twilight sky As if a bonfire burned for cherubim.
Dark orange flames came leering through the pines, And then the moon's face, struggling with a sneeze, Along the flat horizon's level lines Her nostrils fingered with palmetto trees.
Her platinum wand made water wrinkles buckle;
Old Julius gave appreciative chuckle;
"It's jes about hag-hollerin' time," he said.
I watched the globous buckeyes in his head Peer back along the bloody moon-wash dim To see the fish-tailed water-witches swim.
H.
A.
MACABRE IN MACAWS
After the hurricane of the late forties, Peter Polite says, in the live-oak trees Were weird, macabre macaws And ash-colored cockatoos, blown overseas From Nassau and the West Indies.
These hopped about like dead men's thoughts Among the draggled Spanish moss, Preening themselves, all at a loss, Preening faint _caws_, And shrieking from nostalgia-- With dull screams like a child Born with neuralgia-- And this seems true to me, Fitting the landscape's drab grotesquery.
H.
A.
GAMESTERS ALL[7]
The river boat had loitered down its way;
The ropes were coiled, and business for the day Was done.
The cruel noon closed down And cupped the town.
Stray voices called across the blinding heat, Then drifted off to shadowy retreat Among the sheds.
The waters of the bay Sucked away In tepid swirls, as listless as the day.
Silence closed about me, like a wall, Final and obstinate as death.
Until I longed to break it with a call, Or barter life for one deep, windy breath.
A mellow laugh came rippling Across the stagnant air, Lifting it into little waves of life.
Then, true and clear, I caught a snatch of harmony;
Sure lilting tenor, and a drowsing bass, Elusive chords to weave and interlace, And poignant little minors, broken short, Like robins calling June-- And then the tune: "Oh, nobody knows when de Lord is goin ter call, _Roll dem bones_.
It may be in de Winter time, and maybe in de Fall, _Roll dem bones_.
But yer got ter leabe yer baby an yer home an all-- _So roll dem bones_, Oh my brudder, Oh my brudder, Oh my brudder, _Roll dem bones!
_" There they squatted, gambling away Their meagre pay;
Fatalists all.
I heard the muted fall Of dice, then the assured, Retrieving sweep of hand on roughened board.
I thought it good to see Four lives so free From care, so indolently sure of each tomorrow, And hearts attuned to sing away a sorrow.
Then, like a shot Out of the hot Still air, I heard a call: "Throw up your hands!
I've got you all!
It's thirty days for craps.
Come, Tony, Paul!
Now, Joe, don't be a fool!
I've got you cool."
I saw Joe's eyes, and knew he'd never go.
Not Joe, the swiftest hand in River Bow!
Springing from where he sat, straight, cleanly made, He soared, a leaping shadow from the shade With fifty feet to go.
It was the stiffest hand he ever played.
To win the corner meant Deep, sweet content Among his laughing kind;
To lose, to suffer blind, Degrading slavery upon "the gang," With killing suns, and fever-ridden nights Behind relentless bars Of prison cars.
He hung a breathless second in the sun, The staring road before him.
Then, like one Who stakes his all, and has a gamester's heart, His laughter flashed.
He lunged--I gave a start.
God!
What a man!
The massive shoulders hunched, and as he ran With head bent low, and splendid length of limb, I almost felt the beat Of passionate life that surged in him And winged his spurning feet.
And then my eyes went dim.
The Marshal's gun was out.
I saw the grim Short barrel, and his face Aflame with the excitement of the chase.
He was an honest sportsman, as they go.
He never shot a doe, Or spotted fawn, Or partridge on the ground.
And, as for Joe, He'd wait until he had a yard to go.
Then, if he missed, he'd laugh and call it square.
My gaze leapt to the corner--waited there.
And now an arm would reach it.
I saw hope flare Across the runner's face.
Then, like a pang In my own heart, The pistol rang.
The form I watched soared forward, spun the curve.
"By God, you've missed!"
The Marshal shook his head.
No, there he lay, face downward in the road.
"I reckon he was dead Before he hit the ground," The Marshal said.
"Just once, at fifty feet, A moving target too.
That's just about as good As any man could do!
A little tough;
But, since he ran, I call it fair enough."
He mopped his head, and started down the road.
The silence eddied round him, turned and flowed Slowly back and pressed against the ears.
Until unnumbered flies set it to droning, And, down the heat, I heard a woman moaning.
D. H.
[7] "Contemporary Verse," prize poem for 1921. ECLIPSE
Once melodies of street-cries washed these walls, Glad as the refluent song Of cheerful waters from a happy spring That shout their way along;
Such cries were born in other days from lips A spirit taught to sing.
Now it is gone!
Memory expects those hymns for shrimp and prawn, Or the mellifluous chaunt from the black gorge Of Orpheus inside a murky skin, Who looked the gold sun in the eye While garden mists grew thin, And intoned "_Hoppin' John_!"
As when the shadow of the gray eclipse Haggards the countryside, When moon-fooled birds have nothing more to say, And soft untimely bats begin to slide;
As darkness sweeps the morning light away, So silence brushes music now from lips.
Oh!
Can it be the songless spirit of this age Has slain the ancient music, or that ears Have harsher thresholds?
Only this I know: The streets grow more discordant with the years;
And that which bids the huckster sing no more, Will drive the flower-woman from the door.
H.
A.
