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From “The Sea-islands”
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 deliciously; | |
| And the exuberant yams grow golden, thick and sweet; | 5 |
| 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. | |
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| These the black boatmen bring to town | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| 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— | 20 |
| Weaving odd baskets of sweet grass | |
| Lazily and slow, | |
| To sell in the arcaded market | |
| Where men sold their fathers not so long ago. | |
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| For all their poverty, | 25 |
| 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; | 30 |
| 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, | 35 |
| 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; | 40 |
| And woolly 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. | 45 |
| Then bucks flaunt tiger-lily ties and cobalt 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, | 50 |
| 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 | 55 |
| The white man hears, but cannot feel. | |
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| 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, | 60 |
| Playing upon their strings the ocean’s songs. | |
| The ducks fly in long trailing lines; | |
| Geese honk and marsh-hens quank | |
| Among the tidal flats and rushes rank on rank. | |
| On island tufts the heron feeds its viscid young, | 65 |
| And the quick mocker catches | |
| From lips of sons of slaves the eery snatches | |
| And trolls them as no lips have ever sung. | |
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| Oh, it is good to be here in the spring, | |
| When water still stays solid in the North, | 70 |
| 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, | 75 |
| Whispering moon-scandal in the old earth’s ear. | |
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