Chapter 3
There would be eight of them. Here in the gathering light Were waiting eight women or more Who were destined forever to pay, Who never again would laugh back Into the eyes of life In the old glad, confident way. Each huddled dumbly to each; But eyes could not lift from the sea, Only hands touched in the dawn.
_"He would have gone, my man;_ _He was like that. In the night_ _When I awoke with a start,_ _And brought his voice up from my dream:_ _That was goodbye and godspeed._ _I know he is there with the rest."_
Brave, but with quivering lips, Each alone in the press of the crowd, Was saying it over and over.
The day flooded all of the sky; And the ships of the sullen blockade Weighed anchor and drew down the wind, Leaving their wreck to the waves. Hour heaved slowly on hour, Yet how could the city rejoice With the women out there by the wall! Night grew under the wharves, And crept through the listening streets, Until only the red of the tiles Seemed warm from the breath of the day; And the faces that waited and watched Blurred into a wavering line, Like foam on the curve of the dark, Down there by the reticent sea.
What if the darkness should bring The lean blockade-runners across With food for the hungry and spent.... Who could joy in the sudden release While the faces, still-smiling, but wan, Turned slowly to hallow the town?
D.H.
[6] See the note at the back of the book.
LANDBOUND
Bring me one breath from the deep salt sea, Ye vagrant upland airs! Over your forest and field and lea, From the windy deeps that have mothered me, To the heart of one who cares.
Clear to the peace of the sunlit park, You bring with your evening lull The vesper song of the meadow lark; But my soul is sick for the seething dark, And the scream of a wind-blown gull.
And bring to me from the ocean's breast No crooning lullaby; But the shout of a bleak storm-riven crest As it shoulders up in the sodden West And hurtles down the sky.
That, breathing deep, I may feel the sweep Of the wind and the driving rain. For so I know that my heart will leap To meet the call of the strident deep, And will thrill to life again.
D.H.
TWO PAGES
FROM THE BOOK OF THE SEA ISLANDS
PAGE ONE
SHADOWS
There is deliberateness in all sea-island ways, As alien to our days as stone wheels are. The Islands cannot see the use of life Which only lives for change. There days are flat, And all things must move slowly; Even the seasons are conservative-- No sudden flaunting of wild colors in the fall, Only a gradual fading of the green, As if the earth turned slowly, Or looked with one still face upon the sun As Venus does-- Until the trees, the fields, the marshes, All turn dun, dull Quaker-brown, And a mild winter settles down, And mosses are more gray.
All human souls are glasses which reflect The aspects of the outer world; See what terrible gods the huge Himalayas bred! And the fierce Jewish Jaywah came From the hot Syrian deserts With his inhibitory decalogue. The gods of little hills are always tame; Here God is dull, where all things stay the same.
No change on these sea-islands! The huge piled clouds range White in the cobalt sky; The moss hangs, And the strong, tiring sea-winds blow-- While day on glistering day goes by.
The horses plow with hanging heads, Slow, followed by a black-faced man, Indifferent to the sun; The old cotton bushes hang with whitened heads; And there among the live-oak trees, Peep the small whitewashed cabins, Painted blue, perhaps, and scarlet-turbaned women, Ample-hipped, with voices soft and warm With the lean hounds and chocolate children swarm.
Day after day the ocean pumps The awful valve-gates of his heart, Diastole and systole through these estuaries; The tides flow in long, gray, weed-streaked lines; The salt water, like the planet's lifeblood, goes As if the earth were breathing with long-taken breaths And we were very near her heart.
No wonder that these faces show a tired dismay, Looking on burning suns, and scarcely blithe in May; Spring's coming is too fierce with life; And summer is too long; The stunted pine trees struggle with the sand Till the eyes sicken with their dwarfing strife.
There are old women here among these island homes, With dull brown eyes that look at something gray, And tight silver hair, drawn back in lines, Like the beach grass that's always blown one way; With such a melancholy in their faces I know that they have lived long in these places. The tides, the hooting owls, the daylight moons, The leprous lights and shadows of the mosses, The funereal woodlands of these coasts, Draped like a perpetual hearse, And memories of an old war's ancient losses, Dwell in their faces' shadows like gray ghosts. And worse-- The terror of the black man always near-- The drab level of the ricefields and the marsh Lends them a mask of fear.
PAGE TWO
SUNSHINE
This is a different page. Do you suppose the sun here lavishes his heat For nothing, in these islands by the sea? No! The great green-mottled melons ripen in the fields, Bleeding with scarlet, juicy pith deliriously; And the exuberant yams grow golden, thick and sweet; And white potatoes, in grave-rows, With leaves as rough as cat tongues; And pearly onions, and cabbages With white flesh, sweet as chicken meat.
These the black boatmen bring to town On barges, heaped with severed breasts of leaves, Driven by _put-put_ engines Down the long canals, quavering with song, With hail and chuckle to the docks along, Seeing their dark faces down below Reduplicated in the sunset glow, While from the shore stretch out the quivering lines Of the flat, palm-like, reflected pines That inland lie like ranges of dark hills in lines. And so to town-- Weaving odd baskets of sweet grass, Lazily and slow, To sell in the arcaded market, Where men sold their fathers not so long ago. For all their poverty, These patient black men live A life rich in warm colors of the fields, Sunshine and hearty foods, Delighted with the gifts that earth can give, And old tales of _Plateye_ and _Bre'r Rabbit_; While the golden-velvet cornpone browns Underneath the lid among hot ashes, Where the _groundnuts_ roast, Round shadowy fires at nights, With tales of graveyard ghost, While eery spirituals ring, And organ voices sing, And sticks knock maddening rhythms on the floor To shuffling youngsters "cutting" buck-and-wing; Dogs bark; And dog-eyed pickaninnies peek about the door.
Sundays, along the moss-draped roads, The beribboned black folk go to church By threes and twos, carrying their shoes, With orange turbans, ginghams, rainbow hats; Then bucks flaunt tiger-lily ties and watchet suits, Smoking cob pipes and faintly sweet cheroots. Wagons with oval wheels and kitchen chairs screech by, Where Joseph-coated white-teethed maidens sit Demurely, While the old mule rolls back the ivory of his eye. Soon from the whitewashed churches roll away Among the live oak trees, Rivers of melancholy harmonies, Full of the sorrows of the centuries The white man hears, but cannot feel.
But it is always Sunday on sea-islands. Plantation bells, calling the pickers from the fields, Are like old temple gongs; And the wind tells monodies among the pines, Playing upon their strings the ocean's songs; The ducks fly in long, trailing lines; Skeows _squonk_ and marsh-hens _quank_ Among the tidal flats and rushes rank on rank; On island tufts the heron feeds its viscid young; And the quick mocker catches From lips of sons of slaves the eery snatches, And trolls them as no lips have ever sung.
Oh! It is good to be here in the spring, When water still stays solid in the North, When the first jasmine rings its golden bells, And the "wild wistaria" puts forth; But most because the sea then changes tone; Talking a whit less drear, It gossips in a smoother monotone, Whispering moon-scandal in the old earth's ear.
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.
EDGAR ALLAN POE[8]
Once in the starlight When the tides were low, And the surf fell sobbing To the undertow, I trod the windless dunes Alone with Edgar Poe.
Dim and far behind us, Like a fabled bloom On the myrtle thickets, In the swaying gloom Hung the clustered windows Of the barrack-room.
Faint on the evening Tenuous and far As the beauty shaken From a vagrant star, Throbbed the ache and passion Of an old guitar.
Life closed behind us Like a swinging gate, Leaving us unfettered And emancipate; Confidants of Destiny, Intimates of Fate.
I could only cower, Silent, while the night, Seething with its planets, Parted to our sight, Showing us infinity In its breadth and height.
But my chosen comrade, Tossing back his hair With the old loved gesture, Raised his face, and there Shone the agony that those Loved of God must bear.
Oh, we heard the many things Silence has to say; He and I together As alone we lay Waiting for the slow, sweet Miracle of day.
When the bugle's silver Spiralled up the dawn, Dew-dear, night-cool, And the stars were gone, I arose exultant, Like a man new born.
But my friend and master, Heavy-limbed and spent, Turned, as one must turn at last From the sacrament; And his eyes were deep with God's Burning discontent.
D.H.
[8] See the note on Poe.
ALCHEMY[9]
Some souls are strangers in this bourne; Beauty is born from such men's discontent; Earth's grass and stones, Her seas, her forests, and her air Are seas and forests till they mirror on some pool Unusually reflecting in an exile's mind, Who tarries here protesting and alone; And then they get strange shapes from memories of other stars The banished knew, or spheres he dreams will be. Thus is the fivefold vision of the earth recast By ghostly alchemy.
But there are favored spots Where all earth's moods conspire to make a show Of things to be transmuted into beauty By alchemic minds. Such is this island beach where Poe once walked, And heard the melic throbbing of the sea, With muffled sound of harbor bells-- Bells--he loved bells! And here are drifting ghosts of city chimes Come over water through the evening mist, Like knells from death-ships off the coasts of spectral lands.
I think some dusk their metal voices Yet will call him back To walk upon this magic beach again, While Grief holds carnival upon the harbor bar. Heralded by ravens from another air, The master will pass, pacing here, Wrapped in a cape dark as the unborn moon. There will be lightning underneath a star; And he will speak to me Of archipelagoes forgot, Atolls in sailless seas, where dreams have married thought.
H.A.
[9] See the note on Poe.
OSCEOLA[10]
AN EPITAPH
The feathers of the eagle-bonnets ride upon the north wind; The sachems and their totems have perished in the fire; Through the valleys and the rivers and the mountains that you fought for Beats the quick desire. In the happy hunting ground of proven warriors, You have passed the pipe of peace at council fire With the pale-face and the Zulus' mighty chieftains-- Rest with dead desire.
H.A.
[10] The Indian Chief, Osceola, lies buried at Fort Moultrie.
MAGNOLIA GARDENS
A PROSE-POEM
In the spring when the first midges dance and warm days lure the last-year's butterfly, the scarlet of the cardinals begins to flicker through the ivory smoke of the mosses. Then the alligator leaves his winter ooze, and the widening "O" of the ripple which his gar-like nose makes, travels slowly across the sullen ponds, where the pendant gonfalons of the mosses kiss their imaginary duplicates, hanging head downward in the red water.
When the first frog honks with the bull-voiced trumpet of resurgent spring, the jasmine rings its little hawk-bells, golden harp notes through the forest; and the usurping wistaria assumes the purple, reigning imperial and alone, flaunting its _palidementum_ in a cascade of lilac amid the matrix of the mosses. Its sleek, muscular vine-arms writhe round the clasped bodies of live oaks as if two lovers slept beneath a cloak, and the cloisonné pavilion of their dalliance drips a blue-glaze of shadows overhead.
Underneath this motley canopy of gray and blue, lush with the early tenderness of leaves, the pink azaleas open light-shy eyes like pupils of albinos, sloughing off delicate pods that smoulder, when the wind blows, live coals among the gray of furnace ashes. Here are magenta carpets fit for leprechauns, when crescent moons glimmer upon the ocher ponds, and the slow fireflies light their phantom lanterns, weaving to and fro about the ivory-orange marble of the tomb.
Each April day brings opalescent waves of birds that dart like living brands about the aisles to light the flower lamps; nonpareils, orioles, and hummingbirds, a mist of speed upon their wings, while the blue heron stands one-leggéd by the ponds, watching the garden till it seethes and flames with colors from the cloaks of mandarins.
High in the ancient forest the magnolias burn the perfect alban lucence of their lamps; white are their ivory cups like priestly linen, and fragrant with the tang of foreign citrons. An esoteric, mirrored swan slides by like Cleopatra's barge, while drums of color beaten by a maniac blend with old tints of Leonardo's dreams, colors that God might see if his own lightning blasted out his eyes.
This march of color chants a strange barbaric fitness of dithyrambic chords, and moves processional across the days like some encarnadined durbar, where a huge Ethiopian eunuch in red moon-shaped slippers and an orange turban walks with a glittering scimetar, leading a brace of sleepy leopards drugged and golden eyed; the caparisoned elephants swing down a latticed street; silk shawls hang from balconies, brushing the domed gilt of howdahs; and ruby-roped, the maharajahs sway behind the mahout with his peavey-goad.
The stark denial of the blue-ribbed sky looks down upon this garden, where the wantonness of earth is flaunted in the spring against the face of heaven's void sterility. Here stolid faces look ashamed. When the sun leans on boreal wings, there is a month that lovers walk here justified, while flower throats cry in vast choirs, "Glory to life!" and the uplifted trumpets of vine tubas shout with noise of color set to notes of bloom.
MIDDLETON GARDEN
This is a garden where the Son of Heaven Well might walk, With all his dragon-broidered mandarins, To the plucked sound of tenor instruments, With peacocks, kites, and little red balloons, Mirrored with incense and rice-paper lights, And old bronze lanterns on the full moon nights, Upon the lacquered, porcelain-pink lagoons.
If cardinals in sun-blood robes were here To kiss the ring of gorgeous Borgia popes; Or bold de Gama's loot from Malabar: Topaz and ruby, chrysolite and beryl, The golden idol with a thousand hands, And ropes of pearl; They would seem lesser than these flowers are, Whose masculine magnificence makes riches pale.