The Poetry of Racism

The Haunted Oak

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Pray why are you so bare, so bare,

    Oh, bough of the old oak-tree;
And why, when I go through the shade you throw,
    Runs a shudder over me?

My leaves were green as the best, I trow,

    And sap ran free in my veins,
But I saw in the moonlight dim and weird
    A guiltless victim's pains.

I bent me down to hear his sigh;

            I shook with his gurgling moan,
And I trembled sore when they rode away,
            And left him here alone.

They'd charged him with the old, old crime,

    And set him fast in jail:
Oh, why does the dog howl all night long,
    And why does the night wind wail?

He prayed his prayer and he swore his oath,

    And he raised his hand to the sky;
But the beat of hoofs smote on his ear,
    And the steady tread drew nigh.

Who is it rides by night, by night,

    Over the moonlit road?
And what is the spur that keeps the pace,
    What is the galling goad?

And now they beat at the prison door,

    "Ho, keeper, do not stay!
We are friends of him whom you hold within,
    And we fain would take him away

"From those who ride fast on our heels

    With mind to do him wrong;
They have no care for his innocence,
    And the rope they bear is long."
They have fooled the jailer with lying words,
    They have fooled the man with lies;
The bolts unbar, the locks are drawn,
    And the great door open flies.

Now they have taken him from the jail,

    And hard and fast they ride,
And the leader laughs low down in his throat,
    As they halt my trunk beside.

Oh, the judge, he wore a mask of black,

    And the doctor one of white,
And the minister, with his oldest son,
    Was curiously bedight.

Oh, foolish man, why weep you now?

    'Tis but a little space,
And the time will come when these shall dread
    The mem'ry of your face.

I feel the rope against my bark,

    And the weight of him in my grain,
I feel in the throe of his final woe
    The touch of my own last pain.

And never more shall leaves come forth

    On the bough that bears the ban;
I am burned with dread, I am dried and dead,
    From the curse of a guiltless man.

And ever the judge rides by, rides by,

    And goes to hunt the deer,
And ever another rides his soul
    In the guise of a mortal fear.

And ever the man he rides me hard,

    And never a night stays he;
For I feel his curse as a haunted bough,
    On the trunk of a haunted tree.
We Wear the Mask
Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
          We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
          We wear the mask!
 
Sympathy
Paul Laurence Dunbar

I KNOW what the caged bird feels, alas!

          When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
          When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals--
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing

          Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
          And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting--
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,

          When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,--
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
          But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings--
I know why the caged bird sings!
 Strange Fruit
Lewis Allan

Southern trees bear strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song

(A poem to American poets)
by Countee Cullen
I said:
Now will the poets sing,-
Their cries go thundering
Like blood and tears
Into the nation's ears,
Like lightning dart
Into the nation's heart.
Against disease and death and all things fell,
And war,
Their strophes rise and swell
To jar
The foe smug in his citadel.

Remembering their sharp and pretty

Tunes for Sacco and Vanzetti,
I said:
Here too's a cause divinely spun
For those whose eyes are on the sun,
Here in epitome
Is all disgrace
And epic wrong,
Like wine to brace
The minstrel heart, and blare it into song.
Surely, I said,
Now will the poets sing.
But they have raised no cry.
I wonder why

The Ballad of Emmett Till

Bob Dylan

 "Twas down in Mississippi no so long ago,

When a young boy from Chicago town stepped through a Southern door.
This boy's dreadful tragedy I can still remember well,
The color of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till.

Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up.
They said they had a reason, but I can't remember what.
They tortured him and did some evil things too evil to repeat.
There was screaming sounds inside the barn, there was laughing sounds out on the street.

Then they rolled his body down a gulf amidst a bloody red rain
And they threw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain.
The reason that they killed him there, and I'm sure it ain't no lie,
Was just for the fun of killin' him and to watch him slowly die.

And then to stop the United States of yelling for a trial,

Two brothers they confessed that they had killed poor Emmett Till.
But on the jury there were men who helped the brothers commit this awful crime,
And so this trial was a mockery, but nobody seemed to mind.

I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see

The smiling brothers walkin' down the courthouse stairs.
For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free,
While Emmett's body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea.

If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust,
Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust.
Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow,
For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!

This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man

That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan.
But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give,
We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live.
 Canadian Poetry

1. THE COUNTRY

And So We Have Arrived

Louis Dudek

And so we have arrived.

It narrows into the thin St. Lawrence.
Yet a river with a city inside it,
          with a thousand islands,
as Cartier found it,
as Cabot discovered (I saw his face
     in the Ducal Palace in Venice).
We have our physical heroes,
and are also a nation
built in the middle of water.
Somehow a bigger place than we left it:
a country with certain resources,
     and a mind of its own, if lacking hunger.
The mountains of Gaspé doze, reclining,
               in the air vacant as morning.
At home, there will be faces full of this light,
          blank maybe, but beautiful.
Getting started is never easy.
We have work to do.
          Europe is behind us.
               America before us

Quebec
Susanna Moodie
Queen of the West! upon thy rocky throne
In solitary grandeur sternly place;
In awful Majesty thou sitt’st alone,
By Nature’s master-hand supremely graced.
The world has not thy counterpart – thy dower,
Eternal beauty, strength, and matchless power.
The clouds enfold thee in their misty vest,
The lightning glances harmless round thy brow;
The loud-voiced thunder cannot shake thy nest,
Or warring waves that idly chafe below;
The storm above, the waters at thy feet,
May rage and foam – they but secure thy seat.
The mighty river, as it onward rushes
To pour its floods in ocean’s dread abyss,
Checks at thy feet its fierce impetuous gushes,
And gently fawns thy rocky base to kiss.
Stern eagle of the crag! thy bold should be
The mountain home of heaven-born liberty.

True to themselves, thy children may defy

The power and malice of a world combined;
While Britain’s flag, beneath thy deep blue sky,
Spreads its rich folds and watons in the wind;
The offsprings of her glorious race of old,
May rest securely in their mountain hold.

A Canadian Song
Susanna Moodie
Come, launch the light canoe!
The breeze is fresh and strong;
The summer skies are blue,
And ‘tis a joy to float along.
Away o’er the waters!
The bright-glancing waters,
The many-voiced waters,
As they dance in light and song.
When the great Creator spoke,
In the long unmeasured night.
On the living day-spring broke,
And the waters own’d His might.
The voice of many waters,
Of glad, rejoicing waters,
Of living, leaping waters,
First hailed the dawn of light.
2. THE PEOPLE

A Day Off
Lucy Maud Montgomery

Let us put awhile away

All the cares of work-a-day,
For a golden time forget,
Task and worry, toil and fret,
Let us take a day to dream
In the meadow by the stream.

We may lie in grasses cool

Fringing a pellucid pool,
We may learn the gay brook-runes
Sung on amber afternoons,
And the keen wind-rhyme that fills
Mossy hollows of the hills.

Where the wild-wood whisper stirs

We may talk with lisping firs,
We may gather honeyed blooms
In the dappled forest glooms,
We may eat of berries red
O'er the emerald upland spread.

We may linger as we will

In the sunset valleys still,
Till the gypsy shadows creep
From the starlit land of sleep,
And the mist of evening gray
Girdles round our pilgrim way.

We may bring to work again

Courage from the tasselled glen,
Bring a strength unfailing won
From the paths of cloud and sun,
And the wholesome zest that springs
From all happy, growing things.
The Only Words Of My Bryson Grandmother
Bert Almon
Her cloche hat is pulled down to her eyebrows
and the fur collar on her cloth coat
would normally count as trim. But today
there is a rare frost. The boy beside her,
my father, wears knickerbockers
and lace-up boots, and I can count every hook:
the camera gives eternal life to fashion.
The background shows an ornamental plum tree.

The only words of my Bryson grandmother

I've ever read are written on the back of the photo:

Don't I look a sight

but the icycles on plum tree
is very pretty

I would not correct her words

except to say that hoar frost
is so rare where she lived
that few people have the name for it.

I could not correct her words,

knowing she left school at fifteen
to marry a cotton farmer,
knowing she wrote mostly to her mother,
who was in the mental hospital
and therefore reputed to have died long before.
My grandmother would die without pretense,
of angina pectoris--meaning simply pain in the chest-
as my father would in his own time,
at forty-seven, three years short of her span.

I am glad a frosty morning called for a picture.

In an hour or two the sun that made them squint
would melt the frost, send water
dripping from the branches
and down the trunk to the ground.

I would correct everything

but nothing can be corrected.
36 reasons why I want to grow a garden

Jill Battson

Because I want to plunge my hands into dark rich soil

Because I want to sweat as I labour over the fork
I want to taste the salt as I sweat
I want to smell hard work on my body
I want my muscles to ache
and then be soothed by soft rain
Because I want the open canvas of tilled land
I want the beauty of level earth, prepared
I want honest calluses on my hands
Because I want to feel the rough sleeping seeds
tumble through my fingers into the ground
I want to smooth them over with a blanket of soft loam
I want to watch the birth of green shoots
as they push themselves towards the sun
Because I want to lie next to the garden listening to the plants grow
I want to smell the earth after rain and after sun
I want to nurture the seedlings into plants
support them with poles and trellises
I want to talk them through their adolescence
Because I want to watch flowers pollinated by bees and butterflies
I want to see the first fruit
smell the sun warmth of a fresh tomato
Because I want to crush aromatic basil plants in my arms
I want to feel the heavy stalks of corn against my body
I want to see my hands stained by the chlorophyll of their existence
I want to watch the plants shine in rising vermilion sun
and glow in the silver of a full moon
Because I want to listen to their chatter as they decide their destiny
I want to harvest the fruit of my labour
I want to relish each individual vegetable shape in my hands
drink their beauty with my eyes
Because I want to feel their unique presence in the world
I want to press them against my face to feel their textures
I want know that when I cook them they will be minutes old
clean of pesticides and pollution
and when I serve them
ripe, brilliant and ready on white china
I want to know that you'll be there
3. UNIVERSAL THEMES

The Secret Place

Dennis Lee

There's a place I go, inside myself,

          Where nobody else can be,
And none of my friends can tell it's there—
          Nobody knows but me.

It's hard to explain the way it feels,

          Or even where I go.
It isn't a place in time or space,
          But once I'm there, I know.

It's tiny, it's shiny, it can't be seen,

          But it's big as the sky at night . . .
I try to explain and it hurts my brain,
          But once I'm there, it's right.

There's a place I know inside myself,

          And it's neither big nor small,
And whenever I go, it feels as though
          I never left at all.

What I Know of God is This

Milton Acorn

What I know of God is this:

That He has hands, for He touches me.
I can testify to nothing else;
Living among many unseen beings
Like the whippoorwill I'm constantly hearing
But was pointed out to me just once.

Last of our hopes when all hope's past

God, never let me call on Thee
Distracting myself from a last chance
Which goes just as quick as it comes;
And I have doubts of Your omnipotence.
All I ask is... Keep on existing
Keeping Your hands. Continue to touch me.

In the Secular Night

Margaret Atwood

In the secular night you wander around

alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;
you remember it from being sixteen,
when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,
or so you suspected,
and you had to baby-sit.
You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream
and filled up the glass with grapejuice
and ginger ale, and put on Glenn Miller
with his big-band sound,
and lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up the chimney,
and cried for a while because you were not dancing,
and then danced, by yourself, your mouth circled with purple. Now, forty years later, things have
changed,
and it's baby lima beans.
It's necessary to reserve a secret vice.
This is what comes from forgetting to eat
at the stated mealtimes. You simmer them carefully,
drain, add cream and pepper,
and amble up and down the stairs,
scooping them up with your fingers right out of the bowl,
talking to yourself out loud.
You'd be surprised if you got an answer,
but that part will come later. There is so much silence between the words,
you say. You say, The sensed absence
of God and the sensed presence
amount to much the same thing,
only in reverse.
You say, I have too much white clothing.
You start to hum.
Several hundred years ago
this could have been mysticism
or heresy. It isn't now.
Outside there are sirens.
Someone's been run over.
The century grinds on.
4. JUST FOR FUN

A Cautionary Verse
Dennis Lee
My child, do not exaggerate,
Lest you incur a horrid fate—
As ancient oracles relate,
And modern texts corroborate.
For if you ever fabricate,
Dissimulate, prevaricate,
Or even minor facts inflate,
The fist of doom will crush you straight.
Suppose you choose to overstate
How long a spell you had to wait
Until a cab, two minutes late,
Responded to your calls irate.
Before this whopper can abate
Your heart will start to palpitate,
Your vital juices desiccate,
Your kidneys cease to operate.
Not only that: at lightning rate
Your mental functions, small and great,
Will shrivel and deteriorate
To pablum in your puny pate.
Thereafter, sentiments of hate
Will justly start to agitate
Your sturdy colleagues, man and mate,
And prompt them to vituperate,
Till through the world, a weary weight
Upon the modern welfare state,
You reel, you slump, you sob, you prate,
And choose your life to terminate.
But let me not too long dilate
Upon the horrors that await
A person who, disdaining fate,
Should ever once exaggerate.