Singing Nigger
YOUR bony head, Jazbo, O dock walloper,
Those grappling hooks, those wheelbarrow handlers,
The dome and the wings of you, nigger,
The red roof and the door of you,
I know where your songs came from.
I know why God listens to your, “Walk All Over God’s Heaven.”
I heard you shooting craps, “My baby’s going to have a new dress.”
I heard you in the cinders, “I’m going to live anyhow until I die.”
I saw five of you with a can of beer on a summer night and I listened to the five of you harmonizing six ways to sing, “Way Down Yonder in the Cornfield.”
I went away asking where I come from.
Cornhuskers. 1918.
