Delta

I I am a child of the valley. Mud and muck and misery of lowlands are on thin tracks of my feet. Damp draughts of mist and fog hovering over valleys are on my feverish breath. Red clay from feet of beasts colors my mouth and there is blood on my tongue. I go up and down and through this valley and my heart bleeds for our fate. I turn to each stick and stone, marking them for my own; here where muddy water flows at our shanty door and levees stand like a swollen bump on our backyard. I watch rivulets flow trickling into one great river running through little towns through swampy thickets and smoky cities through fields of rice and marshes where the marsh hen comes to stand and buzzards draw thin blue streaks against evening sky. I listen to crooning of familiar lullabies; the honky-tonks are open and the blues are ringing far. In cities a thousand red lamps glow, but the lights fail to stir me and the music cannot lift me and my despair only deepens with the wailing of a million voices strong. O valley of my moaning brothers! Valley of my sorrowing sisters! Valley of lost forgotten men. O hunted desperate people stricken and silently submissive seeking yet sullen ones! If only from this valley we might rise with song! With singing that is ours. II Here in this valley of cotton and cane and banana wharves we labor. Our mothers and fathers labored before us here in this low valley. High above us and round about us stand high mountains rise the towering snow-capped mountains while we are beaten and broken and bowed here in this dark valley. The river passes us by. Boats slip by on the edge of horizons. Daily we fill boats with cargoes of our need and send them out to sea. Orange and plantain and cotton grow here in this wide valley. Wood fern and sour grass and wild onion grow here in this sweet valley. We tend the crop and gather the harvest but not for ourselves do we labor, not for ourselves do we sweat and starve and spend under these mountains we dare not claim, here on this earth we dare not claim, here by the river we dare not claim. Yet we are an age of years in this valley; yet we are bound till death to this valley. Nights in the valley are full of haunting murmurings of our musical prayers of our rhythmical loving of our fumbling thinking aloud. Nights in the houses of our miserable poor are wakeful and tormenting, for out of a deep slumber we are 'roused to our brother who is ill and our sister who is ravished and our mother who is starving. Out of a deep slumber truth rides upon us and we wonder why we are helpless and we wonder why we are dumb. Out of a deep slumber truth rides upon us and makes us restless and wakeful and full of a hundred unfulfilled dreams of today; our blood eats through our veins with the terrible destruction of radium in our bones and rebellion in our brains and we wish no longer to rest. III Now burst the dams of years and winter snows melt with an onrush of a turbulent spring. Now rises sap in slumbering elms and floods overwhelm us here in this low valley. Here there is a thundering sound in our ears. All the day we are disturbed; nothing ever moved our valley more. The cannons boom in our brains and there is a dawning understanding in the valleys of our spirits; there is a crystalline hope there is a new way to be worn and a path to be broken from the past. Into our troubled living flows the valley flooding our lives with a passion for freedom. Our silence is broken in twain even as brush is broken before terrible rain even as pines rush in paths of hurricanes. Our blood rises and bursts in great heart spasms hungering down through valleys in pain and the storm begins. We are dazed in wonder and caught in the downpour. Danger and death stalk the valley. Robbers and murderers rape the valley taking cabins and children from us seeking to threaten us out of this valley. Then with a longing dearer than breathing love for the valley arises within us love to possess and thrive in this valley love to possess our vineyards and pastures our orchards and cattle our harvest of cotton, tobacco, and cane. Love overwhelms our living with longing strengthening flesh and blood within us banding the iron of our muscles with anger making us men in the fields we have tended standing defending the land we have rendered rich and abiding and heavy with plenty. We with our blood have watered these fields and they belong to us. Valleys and dust of our bodies are blood brothers and they belong to us: the long golden grain for bread and the ripe purple fruit for wine the hills beyond for peace and the grass beneath for rest the music in the wind for us the nights for loving the days for living and the circling lines in the sky for dreams. We are like the sensitive Spring walking valleys like a slim young girl full breasted and precious limbed and carrying on our lips the kiss of the world. Only the naked arm of Time can measure the ground we know and thresh the air we breathe. Neither earth nor star nor water's host can sever us from our life to be for we are beyond your reach O mighty winnowing flail! infinite and free!