Loading...

Singing Nigger

YOUR bony head, Jazbo, O dock walloper,  
Those grappling hooks, those wheelbarrow handlers,  
The dome and the wings of you, nigger,  
The red roof and the door of you,  
I know where your songs came from.  
I know why God listens to your, “Walk All Over God’s Heaven.”  
I heard you shooting craps, “My baby’s going to have a new dress.”  
I heard you in the cinders, “I’m going to live anyhow until I die.”  
I saw five of you with a can of beer on a summer night and I listened to the five of you harmonizing six ways to sing, “Way Down Yonder in the Cornfield.”  
I went away asking where I come from.

Cornhuskers. 1918.

#AmericanWriters

Other works by Carl Sandburg...



Top