The Congo and Other Poems | Page 5

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In
Memory of a Child
Galahad, Knight Who Perished
The
Leaden-eyed
An Indian Summer Day on the Prairie
The Hearth
Eternal
The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit
By
the Spring, at Sunset
I Went down into the Desert
Love and Law


The Perfect Marriage
Darling Daughter of Babylon
The Amaranth

The Alchemist's Petition
Two Easter Stanzas
The Traveller-heart

The North Star Whispers to the Blacksmith's Son
Third Section
A Miscellany called "the Christmas Tree"
This Section is a Christmas Tree
The Sun Says his Prayers
Popcorn,
Glass Balls, and Cranberries (As it were)
I. The Lion
II. An
Explanation of the Grasshopper
III. The Dangerous Little Boy Fairies

IV. The Mouse that gnawed the Oak-tree Down
V. Parvenu
VI.
The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly
VII. Crickets on a Strike
How
a Little Girl Danced
In Praise of Songs that Die
Factory Windows
are always Broken
To Mary Pickford
Blanche Sweet
Sunshine

An Apology for the Bottle Volcanic
When Gassy Thompson Struck it
Rich
Rhymes for Gloriana
I. The Doll upon the Topmost Bough

II. On Suddenly Receiving a Curl Long Refused
III. On Receiving
One of Gloriana's Letters
IV. In Praise of Gloriana's Remarkable
Golden Hair
Fourth Section
Twenty Poems in which the Moon is the Principal Figure of Speech
Once More -- To Gloriana
First Section: Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children
I. Euclid
II. The Haughty Snail-king
III. What the Rattlesnake Said

IV. The Moon's the North Wind's Cooky
V. Drying their Wings

VI. What the Gray-winged Fairy Said
VII. Yet Gentle will the Griffin
Be
Second Section: The Moon is a Mirror
I. Prologue. A Sense of
Humor
II. On the Garden-wall
III. Written for a Musician
IV. The
Moon is a Painter
V. The Encyclopaedia
VI. What the Miner in the

Desert Said
VII. What the Coal-heaver Said
VIII. What the Moon
Saw
IX. What Semiramis Said
X. What the Ghost of the Gambler
Said
XI. The Spice-tree
XII. The Scissors-grinder
XIII. My Lady
in her White Silk Shawl
XIV. Aladdin and the Jinn
XV. The
Strength of the Lonely
Fifth Section
War. September 1, 1914
Intended to be Read Aloud
I. Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
II. A Curse for Kings
III.
Who Knows?
IV. To Buddha
V. The Unpardonable Sin
VI.
Above the Battle's Front
VII. Epilogue. Under the Blessing of Your
Psyche Wings
First Section
Poems intended to be read aloud, or chanted.
The Congo
A Study of the Negro Race
I. Their Basic Savagery
Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet
unstable,
# A deep rolling bass. #
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,

Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a
broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM,
With a silk
umbrella and the handle of a broom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay,
BOOM.
THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision.
I could not
turn from their revel in derision.
# More deliberate. Solemnly chanted. # THEN I SAW THE CONGO,
CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,
CUTTING THROUGH
THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.
Then along that

riverbank
A thousand miles
Tattooed cannibals danced in files;

Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song
# A rapidly piling climax of speed and racket. # And a thigh-bone
beating on a tin-pan gong.
And "BLOOD" screamed the whistles and
the fifes of the warriors, "BLOOD" screamed the skull-faced, lean
witch-doctors,
"Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle,
Harry the
uplands,
Steal all the cattle,
Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle,
Bing.

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,"
# With a philosophic pause. #
A roaring, epic, rag-time tune
From
the mouth of the Congo
To the Mountains of the Moon.
Death is an
Elephant,
# Shrilly and with a heavily accented metre. # Torch-eyed and horrible,

Foam-flanked and terrible.
BOOM, steal the pygmies,
BOOM,
kill the Arabs,
BOOM, kill the white men,
HOO, HOO, HOO.
# Like the wind in the chimney. #
Listen to the yell of Leopold's
ghost
Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.
Hear how the
demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.

Listen to the creepy proclamation,
Blown through the lairs of the
forest-nation,
Blown past the white-ants' hill of clay,
Blown past the
marsh where the butterflies play: --
"Be careful what you do,
# All the o sounds very golden.
Heavy accents very heavy.
Light accents very light. Last
line whispered. #
Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,
And all of the other
Gods of
the Congo,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,
Mumbo-Jumbo will
hoo-doo you,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you."
II. Their Irrepressible High Spirits
# Rather shrill and high. #
Wild crap-shooters with a whoop and a

call
Danced the juba in their gambling-hall
And laughed fit to kill,
and shook the town,
And guyed the policemen and laughed them
down
With a boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
# Read exactly as in first section. #
THEN I SAW THE CONGO,
CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,
CUTTING THROUGH
THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.
#