Carolina Chansons Legends of the Low Country

Excerpt

SÉANCE AT SUNRISE

Place the new hands
In the old hands
Of the old generation,
And let us tilt tables
In the high room
Of our imagination.
Let the thick veil glow thin,
At sunrise—at sunrise—
Let the strange eyes peer in,
The red, the black, and the white faces
Of the still living dead
Of the three races.
Let a quaint voice begin:
Voice of an Indian
"Gone from the land,
We leave the music of our names,
As pleasant as the sound of waters;
Gone is the log-lodge and the skin tepee,
And moons ago the ghost-canoe brought home
The latest of our sons and daughters—
Yet still we linger in tobacco smoke
And in the rustling fields of maize;
Faint are the tracks our moccasins have left,
But they are there, down all your ways."
Voice of a Slave
"We do not talk
Of hours in the rice
When days were long,
Nor of old masters
Who are with us here
Beyond all right or wrong.
Only white afternoons come back,
When in the fields
We reached the Mercy Seat
On wings of song."
Voice of a Planter
"Nothing moves there but the night wind,
Blowing the mosses like smoke;
All would be silent as moonlight
But for the owl in the oak—
Stairways that lead up to nothing—
Windows like terrible scars—
Snakes on a log in the cistern
Peering at stars...."
Spirit of Prophecy
"Dawn with its childish colors
Stipples the solemn vault of night;
Behind the horizon the sun shakes a bloody fist;
Mysteries stand naked by the lakes of mist;
Spirits take flight,
The medicine man,
The voodoo doctor—
Witches mount brooms.
The day looms.
Faster it comes,
Bringing young giants
Who hate solitude,
And march with drums—
Beat—beat—beat,
Down every ancient street,
The young giants! Minded like boys:
Action for action's sake they love
And noise for noise."
Voice of a Poet
"The fire of the sunset
Is remembered at midnight,
But forgotten at dawn.
While the old stars set,
Let us speak of their glory
Before they are gone."

H.A.

You who have known my city for a day
And heard the music of her steepled bells,
Then laughed, and passed along your vagrant way,
Carrying only what the city tells
To those who listen solely with their ears;
You know St. Matthew's swinging harmonies,
And old St. Michael's tale of golden years
Far less like bells than chanted memories.
Yet there is something wanting in the song
Of lyric youth with voice unschooled by pain.
And there are breathing stillnesses that throng
Dim corners, and that only stir again
When bells are dumb. Not even bronze that beats
Our heart-throbs back can tell of old defeats.
But you who take the city for your own,
Come with me when the night flows deep and kind
Along these narrow ways of troubled stone,
And floods the wide savannas of the mind
With tides that cool the fever of the day:
One with the dark, companioned by the stars,
We'll seek St. Philip's, nebulous and gray,
Holding its throbbing beacon to the bars,
A prisoned spirit vibrant in the stone
That knew its empire of forgotten things.
Then will the city know you for her own,
And feel you meet to share her sufferings;
While down a swirl of poignant memories,
Herself shall find you in her silences.
Once coaches waited row on shining row
Before this door; and where the thirsty street
Drank the deep shadow of the portico
The Sunday hush was stirred by happy feet,
Low greetings, and the rustle of brocade,
The organ throb, and warmth of sunny eyes
That flashed and smiled beneath a bonnet shade;
Life with the lure of all its swift disguise.
Then from the soaring lyric of the spire,
Like the composite voice of all the town,
The bells burst swiftly into singing fire
That wrapped the building, and which showered down
Bright cadences to flash along the ways
Loud with the splendid gladness of the days....