The Ballad of Sue Ellen Westerfield

(for Clyde)

She grew up in bedeviled southern wilderness,

but had not been a slave, she said,

because her father wept and set her mother free.

She hardened in perilous rivertowns

and after The Surrender,

went as maid upon the tarnished Floating Palaces.

Rivermen reviled her for the rankling cold

sardonic pride

that gave a knife-edge to her comeliness.

When she was old, her back still straight,

her hair still glossy black,

she’d talk sometimes

of dangers lived through on the rivers.

But never told of him,

whose name she’d vowed she would not speak again

till after Jordan.

Oh, he was nearer nearer now

than wearisome kith and kin.

His blue eyes followed her

as she moved about her tasks upon the Memphis Rose.

He smiled and joshed, his voice quickening her.

She cursed the circumstance. . . .

The crazing horrors of that summer night,

the swifting flames, he fought his way to her,

the savaging panic, and helped her swim to shore.

The steamer like besieged Atlanta blazing,

the cries, the smoke and bellowing flames,

the flamelit thrashing forms in hellmouth water,

and he swimming out to them,

leaving her dazed and lost.

A woman screaming under the raddled trees—

Sue Ellen felt it was herself who screamed.

The moaning of the hurt, the terrified—

she held off shuddering despair

and went to comfort whom she could.

Wagons torches bells

and whimpering dusk of morning

and blankness lostness nothingness for her

until his arms had lifted her

into wild and secret dark.

How long how long was it they wandered,

loving fearing loving,

fugitives whose dangerous only hidingplace

was love?

How long was it before she knew

she could not forfeit what she was,

even for him—could not, even for him,

forswear her pride?

They kissed and said farewell at last.

He wept as had her father once.

They kissed and said farewell.

Until her dying-bed,

she cursed the circumstance.