— HARRY GOLDEN, from Carl Sandburg

Jazz Fantasia

Drum on your drums, batter on your banjoes,

sob on the long cool winding saxophones.

Go to it, O jazzmen.

Sling your knuckles on the bottoms of the happy

tin pans, let your trombones ooze, and go husha-

husha-hush with the slippery sand-paper.

Moan like an autumn wind high in the lonesome treetops, moan soft like you wanted somebody terrible, cry like a racing car slipping away from a motorcycle cop, bang-bang! you jazzmen, bang altogether drums, traps, banjoes, horns, tin cans—make two people fight on the top of a stairway and scratch each other’s eyes in a clinch tumbling down the stairs.

Can the rough stuff . . . now a Mississippi steamboat pushes up the night river with a hoo-hoo-hoo-oo . . . and the green lanterns calling to the high soft stars . . . a red moon rides on the humps of the low river hills . . . go to it, O jazzmen.

Sojourner Truth Speaking

I felt as if I had three hearts

and they were so large

my body could hardly hold them.

* * *

If my cup won’t hold but a pint

and yourn holds a quart,

wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have

my little half-measure full?

* * *

Here you are talking about being

“changed in the twinkling of an eye.”

If the Lord should come

He’d change you to nothing

for there’s nothing to you.

* * *

Dat little man he say woman

can’t have as much rights as man

’cause Christ wasn’t a woman.

Whar did your Christ come from? Whar?

From God and a woman.

Man had nothing to do with Him.

* * *

Jesus will walk with me through the fire

and keep me from harm.

Nothing belonging to God can burn,

any more than God himself.

I shall remain.

Do you tell me

that God’s children

can’t stand fire?

The People, Yes

55

On Lang Syne Plantation they had a prayer:

“When we rise in the morning

to see the sun plowing his furrow across the elements,

we are thankful.

For the rising of the east moon we have seen tonight

and for the setting of the west moon we shall see,

we are thankful.

And O Lord—

When my room is like a public hall,

when my face is like a looking-glass,

when my teeth shut against a silence,

mother do me no good then,

father do me no good then,

sister, brother, friend, do me no good then.

Help us to know—

when our hands rest from the plow handle and lie still—

when we are like hills gone down in darkness—

when our nostrils are empty of breath—

then let us know when we trust in Thee—

Thou art a crutch to the lame,

a mother to the motherless,

a father to the fatherless,

a strong arm to the widow,

a shade from the heat,

a bridge over deep water.”