Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AND THE RIVERS RUN SOUTH, by FREDERICK R. MCCREARY



Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AND THE RIVERS RUN SOUTH, by                    
First Line: Rivers run south in america
Last Line: My country, and her rivers running south.
Subject(s): Rivers; United States; America


Rivers run south in America --
From the north, and the east, and the west.
Always I must tell you of south-running valleys,
Telling these, I give you my country.
The Arkansas, James, Colorado,
I give you my country exulting,
I give you no couplets.
Can you gather the storm in a raindrop,
The night in a bird-shadow over the noon?
Then neither can you fondle America,
Tied and beribboned in a sonnet.
Things held in the left hand,
Measured with the right hand,
Are things that are dead,
And our country -- Ah God, how it lives!
The joy of our rivers running south,
Our river Mississippi, our broad-bosomed father,
Searching and knowing
The length and the span of our being!

I remember looking out from our school,
Looking down a long street with its elms,
And the street went down to a river;
I picked my first violets close to this river,
I saw death the first time, by this river.
I remember a plow taken down from a wagon,
And the fields that began at our doorstep;
I would watch them turned over into a soft breathing darkness,
Dark like the river that ran just beyond them;
Then I would stand guard knowing pain for them,
I would scream for intruders across them,
For they were my own, my America;
I was their lover, I and the river.
And I would run over these fields in the night,
Sinking down in the cool clinging blackness
While the moon would look down at me stumbling,

Lost in my prayers:
"My country, my country."
What squaws stooped along with me then,
Up from the river,
Their hands full of seeds,
Mumbling "America"?
What Braves slog-slogged at the fieldside,
Slogged their foot and thigh rhythm, drum rhythm,
Thumping "America"?
I would fall, and my hands full of earth,
I would run to the house and the fattening lilacs,
The cherry trees waiting and the apples;
There with the moonlight, the shadows,
The music of the river within me,
I would know my America,

Everywhere, always,
I go over rivers --
Down the night-trodden coolness of morning,
Yellow hands of the willows
Bending the winter to April;
Up the thin autumn dusk,
Dead leaves ticking
The last thin breaths of October.
I hear freights in the night
Pushing the darkness
Up hill and down hill and over the rivers
Into stations of dawn.
I know liners tied to wet wharves,
Jostling America,
My country suckling her harbors at the flow of her rivers,
Holding her children,
Holding tomorrow.

Have you gone down the nights on the Mississippi River?
Down the Missouri to the meeting of the waters?
Down the Ohio?
Oh Missouri, Missouri --
What sound and roar of south-pouring water,
Snatching the Yellowstone up from Wyoming,
And across Montana,
Down through the wheat.
Ohio, Ohio, river running over,
Black coal and iron;
Mississippi, Mississippi,
Side-wheeler, raft and canoe --
O hug the plantation and hold the cotton,
Down the nights and down the days,
Down our America,
Rock, and root, and blossom.

Brown hills, thumbs of American mountains --
I see the wild geese flying over,
Writing high the first letter of April,
And I hear them again going back;
The geese go north and the geese return,
But always our rivers run south.

Now I listen to axes in the night,
(Who can hear axes at night without wincing?)
I hear the trees going over,
The fall of old years going down.
I hear hammers in the night,
Riveters' hammers,
I see the quick tossing of flame,
The weaving, the binding, and the growth.
In May are the tulips,
Slow loosening of petals from a center;
And in May the top-story derricks
Lift petals of stone up the mornings.
And the rivers run south in America,
Susquehanna, Savannah,
Merrimac, Red, Alabama.

A walking of many great people, my country,
These men and these women, these lovers and children.
I see them by day in the fields
With the sowing, the reaping, the building;
I see them at night in the cities,
With the lights and the smoke blowing over the lights.
In the morning they go, and the noon,
Down the afternoon slant to the nights,
While the statesmen stand in their park-niches.
(Statesmen of stone and of bronze,
Long ago did they lean over bridges and listen to the water,
Water running south?)

O listen, my country, to the rivers,
Rivers telling of the rain,
The rain at our roots,
Our roots lying south with our rivers,
The rain like our prayers, like our laughter,
Molding yesterday's dust
Into loam for more and more growing:
Lean right, or lean left, they always run south at the end;
They tell you that nothing takes God in an unbending line,
Each tower, each prayer,
Has its curves of remembering, its fear and its laughter --
O listen, my country,
While the rivers run south -- do you hear them?

With my right hand, my left hand,
I may give you the moon, I may give you the lilacs --
But always I give you America,
My country, and her rivers running south.





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