The hidden nation, untaught, unrecognized,
Free at last, but not yet free with the free,
Ignorant, joyful, wronged, child-minded and searching,
Searching the army’s road for this new wild thing
That means so much but can’t be held in the hand,
That must be there, that yet is so hard to find,
This dream, this pentecost changing, this liberty.
Some wander away to strange death or stranger life,
Some wander awhile and starve and come back at last,
Some stay by the old plantation but will not work
To the great disgust of masters and mistresses,
Sing idly, gamble, sleep through the lazy hours,
Waiting for friendly heaven to rain them down
The mule and the forty acres of their desire.
Some, faithful beyond the bond that they never signed,
Hold to that bond in ruin as in the sun,
Steal food for a hungry mistress, keep her alive,
Keep the house alive, try to pick the weeds from the path,
Gather the wood and chop it and make the fire,
With pitying scorn for the runaway sheep of freedom,
Freedom’s a ghost and freedom’s a foolish talk,
What counts is making the fire as it should be made. …
Oh, blackskinned epic, epic with the black spear,
I cannot sing you, having too white a heart,
And yet, some day, a poet will rise to sing you
And sing you with such truth and mellowness,
—Deep mellow of the husky, golden voice
Crying dark heaven through the spirituals,
Soft mellow of the levee roustabouts,
Singing at night against the banjo-moon—
That you will be a match for any song
Sung by old, populous nations in the past,
And stand like hills against the American sky,
And lay your black spear down by Roland’s horn.
Meanwhile, in Georgia, the scythe of the march mows on,
The Southern papers discount it as best they can.
Lincoln is anxious, Davis more anxious still.
The war is in its last winter of strife and pain.
Cudjo buried the silverware
On a graveyard night of sultry air
While the turned sods smelled of the winter damp
And Mary Lou Wingate held the lamp.
They worked with a will. They did not speak.
The light was yellow. The light was weak.
A tomb-light casting a last, brief flame
Over the grave of Wingate fame.
The silver bowl of the Wingate toasts,
The spoons worn hollow by Wingate ghosts,
Sconce and ladle and bead-rimmed plate
With the English mark and the English weight,
The round old porringer, dented so
By the first milk-teeth of the long ago,
And the candlesticks of Elspeth Mackay
That she brought with her youth on her wedding-day
To light the living of Wingate Hall
While the mornings break and the twilights fall
And the night and the river have memories. …
There was a spook in Cudjo’s eyes
As he lowered the chests where they must lie
And patted the earth back cunningly.
He knew each chest and its diverse freight
As a blind man knows his own front gate
And, decade by decade and piece by piece,
With paste and shammy and elbow-grease,
He had made them his, by the pursed-up lips
And the tireless, polishing fingertips,
Till now as he buried them, each and all,
What he buried was Wingate Hall,
Himself and the moon and the toddy-sippers,
The river-mist and the dancing-slippers,
Old Marse Billy and Mary Lou
And every bit of the world he knew,
Master and lady and house and slave,
All smoothed down in a single grave.
He was finished at length. He shook his head.
“Mistis, reckon we’s done,” he said.
They looked at each other, black and white,
For a slow-paced moment across the light.
Then he took the lamp and she smoothed her shawl
And he lit her back to the plundered Hall,
To pray, with her old serene observance
For the mercy of God upon faithful servants
And a justice striking all Yankees dead
On her cold, worn knees by the great carved bed,
Where she had lain by a gentleman’s side,
Wife and mother and new-come bride,
Sick with the carrying, torn with the borning,
Waked by the laughter on Christmas morning,
Through love and temper and joy and grief,
And the years gone by like the blowing leaf.
She finished her prayer with Louisa’s child,
And, when she had risen, she almost smiled.
She struck her hand on the bedstead head,
“They won’t drive me from my house,” she said,
As the wood rang under her wedding-ring.
Then she stood for a moment, listening,
As if for a step, or a gentleman’s name,
But only the gnats and the echoes came.
Cudjo, being less fortified,
Covered his ears with his hands and tried
To shut the noise of the risen wind
Out of the trouble of his mind.
He thought, “Ain’t right for dat wind to blow.
She wasn’t blowing awhile ago.
Jus’ riz up fum de earth somewhere
When we buried dat orphan silver dere.
Got to hide it, and so we tried,
But silver like dat don’t like to hide,
Silver’s ust to be passed aroun’
Don’t like lyin’ in lonesome groun’,
Wants to come back to de Hall, all right.
Silver, I always shone you bright,
You could see yo’self in de shine—
Silver, it wasn’t no fix of mine!
Don’t you come projeckin’ after me!”
His eyes were shut but he still could see
The slow chests rising out of the ground
With an ominous clatter of silver sound,
The locks undoing, the bags unfastening,
And every knife and platter and spoon
Clinking out of the grave and hastening
Back to the Hall, in the witches’ moon;
And the wind in the chimney played such tricks
That it was no wind, be it soft or loud,
But Elspeth seeking her candlesticks
All night long in her ruffled shroud,
The deep voice haunting the ocean-shell
To give her judgment and weave her spell,
“Thrift and love for the house and the chief
And a scone on the hob for the son of grief,
But a knife in the ribs for the pleasant thief.”
Cudjo heard it, and Cudjo shook,
And Cudjo felt for the Holy Book,
And the wind blew on without peace or rest,
Blowing the straws from the dried-up nest.
Bailey, tramping along with Sherman’s bummers,
Grumbled and found life pleasant and hummed his tune.
He was well, the blood ran in him, he ate for ten,
He and the gang had salvaged a wall-eyed nig
To fix their victuals—and if the captain was on,
The captain had a blind eye. Last night it was turkey,
The night before it was duck—well, you couldn’t expect
Such things to keep on forever, but while they did
It was pretty soft—it was war like it ought to be.
The Old Man
