After Carl Sandburg
SOUL Butcher for the Country,
Heartbreaker, Stacker of the Deck,
Player with Northbound Trains, the Nation’s Black Beacon;
Frigid, windy, sprawling,
City of Cold Shoulders.
They tell me you have lied and I believe them,
for I have seen your Mississippi women stumbling
Madison Street searching for their painted city legs.
And they tell me you are evil and I answer: Yes, I know.
I have seen babies cooking their hair, fingering blades,
changing their names to symptoms of jazz.
And they speak of souls you swallow, and my reply is:
On the shadowed faces of men in the factory lines
I have witnessed the beginnings of the furthest falling.
And having answered so I turn to the people who spit at my city,
and I spit back at them before I say:
Come and show me another city with head thrown back wailing
bladed blue, field hollers, so astounded to be breathing and bleeding.
Spewing electric hymns rhythmed against the staccato pound of
fiery steel presses, here is a defiant ass whupper
shaking its massive fists at sweating southern “towns”;
Feral as a junkyard mutt, taut, muscled against his enemy, shrewd
as an explorer pitted against an untried land,
Wily as a Louisiana boy faced with days of concrete,
Wiry-headed,
Digging,
Destroying,
Deciding,
Swallowing, expelling, swallowing,
Under the rubble, thrusting forth, laughing with
perfect teeth,
Shedding the terrible burden of skin, laughing as a white
man laughs,
Laughing even as a soldier laughs, addicted to the need of his next battle,
Laughing and bragging that under that skin is the cage of his ribs
And under his ribs beats a whole unleashed heart.
Laughing!
Laughing the frigid, windy, sprawling laughter of
a Southern man, folded against the cold, sparkling, sweating,
proud to be
SOUL Butcher for the Country,
Heartbreaker, Stacker of the Deck,
Receiver of Northbound Trains and the Nation’s Black Beacon.