Southern Song

Mr. Africa Poetry Lounge!

I want my body bathed again by southern suns, my soul
        reclaimed again from southern land. I want to rest
        again in southern fields, in grass and hay and clover
        bloom; to lay my hand again upon the clay baked by a
        southern sun, to touch the rain-soaked earth and smell
        the smell of soil.

I want my rest unbroken in the fields of southern earth;
        freedom to watch the corn wave silver in the sun and
        mark the splashing of a brook, a pond with ducks and
        frogs and count the clouds.

I want no mobs to wrench me from my southern rest; no
forms to take me in the night and burn my shack and
make for me a nightmare full of oil and flame.

I want my careless song to strike no minor key; no fiend to
stand between my body's soutnern song--the fusion of
the South, my body's song and me.

Written by Margaret Walker (1915-1998)

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