Booker T & Them: A Blues

Interlude 6

Interlude six 01 Harris text.indd 68 12/13/11 11:25 AM In Which Is Related the Aftermath, with Spiders & Webs & a Widow Mother’s Planning Hum hm hmummm Baby crying. It is still a tough time for negroes. How long? 2, 3, 4 . . . Crying baby. Hum hm huummummm HER Can’t stay here can’t stay here can’t stay here, she says, don’t know where don’t know where but can’t stay here can’t stay here. Baby crying. How long? Mewing son suckling her now widow’s nipple, as she, in the morning-after, eyes the dangling twist; slow & resolute as the loop of heaven’s lights. For their idiocy to hold sway Jim Crowists, while making us jump down spin around through the foolwitty ether of their self-born supremacy, think time, successive existence, is jacked back to the dark abysm of their false-faced good ol’ Golden Days (when niggers in their place, acted upon by an unbalanced force, stayed in their place), 01 Harris text.indd 69 12/13/11 11:25 AM ( 70 ) & even now can still be kept inert or at least still be slowed to foot-dragging, bone-idle tempo by their terrorism. Can’t stay here can’t stay here, she says, don’t know where, don’t know where but can’t stay here can’t stay here. Thread by silvery thread the garden spider, black & gold, weaves its lethal gossamer lattice. Counseled— Never think that God’s delays are God’s denials.— Consoled— Hold on;— Half hears about pain’s abruptness— Hold fast;— & nature’s & time’s slow— Hold out.— but certain pace— Patience is genius. Zigging-zagging ghost bridge between tree branch & trunk. She needs fleet, not forbearance; needs for time to scurry forth like segmented spider’s legs, nimble as ragtimers’ capering fingers, capable of sparking her anger, freeing her screams, urging running rants, tearing of flesh & hair— How long? Spider, done, hangs in its snare’s bull’s eye, awaiting. —but if escape from these savages is simple 01 Harris text.indd 70 12/13/11 11:25 AM ( 71 ) as that she would have taken it long, long ago. A wasp’s maddening, cocksure, rapacious whir. Darts dazzled; webbed by dewy strings shiny as magazine pearls. Spider, 8 limbs a-loping, greets its flailing guest; trusses it in a silken shroud. Bites. Grieve but plan, ’s’what he’d say, she thinks. Thinks: Little boy, going to try, try & get you beyond the snap & slither of these mad-dogs & 2-faced snakes. Try, try—if it’s the last thing I do. So you can be a man. Grieve but plan . . . Grieve but plan . . . Chickens cluck, flap, & scatter as she crosses the time-polished dooryard toward the slack cabin where the grief-burdened old man, tears pooled in sightless eyes like soapy water in an enamel washbowl, slumps. & still it is a hard time for negroes. How long. Says: Git!—Not just a crop life, but seasons. Clear of the length of their lethal reach; sprout new roots to run like spider’s tendrils, shoots of new growth, like highways, & railroads north & east & west, underground streams tunneling through, under, & around. Away. Past. Clear. Off. From. Afar. Elsewhither. Yonder. Beyond. Sings: Oh, come on boys & line the track . . . As the sorrow-browed hound whines its gut-deep repine. 01 Harris text.indd 71 12/13/11 11:25 AM ...