Classic and Contemporary Poetry
PIRATE LEGEND, by DUBOSE HEYWARD Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Under the feet of a tall machine Last Line: Driven city stumbled from its sleep. Subject(s): African Americans; Negroes; American Blacks | ||||||||
I Under the feet of a tall machine, In the false and tricky dark That grew where the sky-flung derricks lean Over the littered park, A gang of negroes, burrowing With bar and pick and spade, Tugged and bent to an iron ring In a hole their tools had made. A sudden give, and the earth fell clear; A gasp, and seven blacks Bunched and cringed, and muttered a prayer To the thing behind their backs. For a moon grown suddenly old and blue Laid withered hands upon A mouldy chest, and a bone or two From a rotting skeleton. A shooting star whined overhead, The arc-lights winced and failed, And a lonely wind from the long-time-dead Crept to their ears and wailed. Then terror loosed them and let them go In a storm of flailing feet, To tell their tale by the lantern glow Of the shops in Sailor Street. But when the engines summoned day Up from oblivion, And the gang crept back to loot the clay, The chest and bones were gone. II Simon the drunkard swears he saw them going In a shaking world of neither here nor there, Tottering out of the shades, and slowly blowing Across the park, lighter than harbor air, With a wedge of the Milky Way serenely showing Through cloven skulls under the matted hair. Yes, he will tell you that he watched them travel Out to te city's edge with a mouldy chest: How they would bulk in the dark, and then unravel Under the lights; and, when they paused to rest, Dusted their burden free of city gravel, And waited tense lest any should molest. Heaving their treasure to their backs, they waded The last salt stream; and where the forests keep The old lost darks and silences, they faded. Back in the early gray, steel-throated, deep, The engines ripped the silence, and the jaded, Driven city stumbled from its sleep. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MY AUNT ELLA MAE by MICHAEL S. HARPER DERRICK POEM (THE LOST WORLD) by TERRANCE HAYES ODE TO BIG TREND by TERRANCE HAYES WOOFER (WHEN I CONSIDER THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN) by TERRANCE HAYES CONDITIONS XXI by ESSEX HEMPHILL ALTERNATIVES by DUBOSE HEYWARD |
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