Their voices rise ... the pine trees are guitars, Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain ... Their voices rise ... the chorus of the cane Is caroling a vesper to the stars ... O singers, resinous and soft your songs Above the sacred whisper of the pines, Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines, Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs. SONG OF THE SON Pour O pour that parting soul in song, O pour it in the sawdust glow of night, Into the velvet pine-smoke air to-night, And let the valley carry it along. And let the valley carry it along. O land and soil, red soil and sweet-gum tree, So scant of grass, so profligate of pines, Now just before an epoch’s sun declines, Thy son, in time, I have returned to thee, Thy son, I have in time returned to thee. In time, for though the sun is setting on A song-lit race of slaves, it has not set; Though late, O soil, it is not too late yet To catch thy plaintive soul, leaving, soon gone, Leaving, to catch thy plaintive soul soon gone. O Negro slaves, dark purple ripened plums, Squeezed, and bursting in the pine-wood air, Passing, before they stripped the old tree bare One plum was saved for me, one seed becomes An everlasting song, a singing tree, Caroling softly souls of slavery, What they were, and what they are to me, Caroling softly souls of slavery. COTTON SONG Come, brother, come. Let’s lift it; Come now, hewit! roll away! Shackles fall upon the Judgment Day But let’s not wait for it. God’s body’s got a soul, Bodies like to roll the soul, Can’t blame God if we don’t roll, Come, brother, roll, roll! Cotton bales are the fleecy way Weary sinner’s bare feet trod, Softly, softly to the throne of God, “We ain’t agwine t’ wait until th’ Judgment Day! Nassur; nassur, Hump. Eoho, eoho, roll away! We ain’t agwine t’ wait until th’ Judgment Day!” God’s body’s got a soul, Bodies like to roll the soul, Can’t blame God if we don’t roll, Come, brother, roll, roll! FACE Hair-- silver-gray, like streams of stars, Brows-- recurved canoes quivered by the ripples blown by pain, Her eyes--mist of tears condensing on the flesh below And her channeled muscles are cluster grapes of sorrow purple in the evening sun nearly ripe for worms. NOVEMBER COTTON FLOWER Boll-weevil’s coming, and the winter’s cold, Made cotton-stalks look rusty, seasons old, And cotton, scarce as any southern snow, Was vanishing; the branch, so pinched and slow, Failed in its function as the autumn rake; Drouth fighting soil had caused the soil to take All water from the streams; dead birds were found In wells a hundred feet below the ground-- Such was the season when the flower bloomed. Old folks were startled, and it soon assumed Significance. Superstition saw Something it had never seen before: Brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear, Beauty so sudden for that time of year. JOSEPH S. COTTER, JR.