I. I was born on the
prairie
I was born on the prairie
and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women,
gave me a song and a slogan.
Here the water went down,
the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the
black loam came, and the yellow sandy loam.
Here now a morning star
fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn
belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
Here the gray geese go five
hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry for
a new home.
Here I know I will hanker
after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled
to a river moon of water.
The prairie sings to me in
the forenoon and I know in the night I rest easy in the prairie arms, on
the prairie heart.
II. Dust of men
I am here when the cities
are gone. I am here before the cities come. I nourished the lonely men
on horses. I will keep the laughing men who ride iron. I am dust of men.
I am dust of your dust, as I am brother and mother To the copper faces,
the worker in flint and clay, The singing women and their sons a
thousand years ago Marching single file the timber and the plain. I hold
the dust of these amid changing stars. I last while old wars are fought,
while peace broods mother-like, While new wars arise and the fresh
killings of young men. I fed the boys who went to France in great dark
days. I who have seen the red births and the red deaths Of sons and
daughters, I take peace or war, I say nothing and wait.
III. They are mine
Have you seen a red sunset
drip over one of my cornfields, the shore of night stars, the wave lines
of dawn up a wheat valley?
Have you heard my threshing
crews yelling in the chaff of a strawpile and the running wheat of the
wagonboards, my cornhuskers, my harvest hands hauling crops, singing
dreams of women, worlds, horizons?
They are mine, the
threshing crews eating beefsteak, the farmboys driving steers to the
railroad cattle pens.
They are mine, the crowds
of people at a Fourth of July basket picnic, listening to a lawyer read
the Declaration of Independence, watching the pinwheels and Roman
candles at night, the young men and women two by two hunting the bypaths
and kissing bridges.
They are mine, the horses
looking over a fence in the frost of late October saying good-morning to
the horses hauling wagons of rutabaga.
They are mine, the old
zigzag rail fences, the new barb wire.
I am the prairie, mother of
men, waiting.
Rivers cut a path on flat
lands. The mountains stand up. The salt oceans press in And push on the
coast lines. The sun, the wind, bring rain And I know what the rainbow
writes across the east or west in a half-circle: A love-letter pledge to
come again.
IV. When the red and the
white men met
Out of prairie-brown grass
crossed with a streamer of wigwam smoke – out of a smoke pillar, a blue
promise – out of wild ducks woven in greens and purples –
Here I saw a city rise and
say to the peoples round world: Listen, I am strong, I know what I want.
Out of log houses and
stumps – canoes stripped from tree-sides – flatboats coaxed with an ax
from the timber claims – in the years when the red and the white men met
– the houses and streets rose.
A thousand red men cried
and went away to new places for corn and women: a million white men came
and put up skyscrapers, threw out rails and wires, feelers to the salt
sea: now the smokestacks bite the skyline with stub teeth.
V. In the dark of a
thousand years
To a man across a thousand
years I offer a handshake. I say to him: Brother, make the story short,
for the stretch of a thousand years is short. What brothers these in the
dark? What eaves of skyscrapers against a smoke moon? These chimneys
shaking on the lumber shanties When the coal boats plow by on the river
– The hunched shoulders of the grain elevators – The flame sprockets of
the sheet steel mills And the men in the rolling mills with their shirts
off Playing their flesh arms against the twisting wrists of steel: what
brothers these in the dark of a thousand years?
VIa. Cool prayers
After the sunburn of the
day handling a pitchfork at a hayrack, after the eggs and biscuit and
coffee, the pearl-gray haystacks in the gloaming are cool prayers to the
harvest hands.
VIb. O prairie girl
Spring slips back with a
girl face calling always: “Any new songs for me? Any new songs?”
O prairie girl, be lonely,
singing, dreaming, waiting – your lover comes – your child comes – the
years creep with toes of April rain on new-turned sod.
O prairie girl, whoever
leaves you only crimson poppies to talk with, whoever puts a good-by
kiss on your lips and never comes back –
There is a song deep as the
falltime redhaws, long as the layer of black loam we go to, the shine of
the morning star over the corn belt, the wave line of dawn up a wheat
valley.
VIc. Songs hidden in eggs
Look at six eggs In a
mockingbird’s nest.
Listen to six mockingbirds
Flinging follies of O-be-joyful Over the marshes and uplands.
Look at songs Hidden in
eggs.
VII. Tomorrow
O prairie mother, I am one
of your boys. I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full
of pain over love. Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as
one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.
I speak of new cities and new people. I tell you the past is a bucket of
ashes. I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down, a sun dropped in the
west. I tell you there is nothing in the world only an ocean of
to-morrows, a sky of to-morrows. I am a brother of the cornhuskers who
say at sundown: Tomorrow is a day.
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