PIRATE LEGEND by DUBOSE HEYWARD

I

Under the feet of a tall machine,
In the false and tricky dark
That grew where the sky-flung derricks lean
Over the littered park,

A gang of negroes, burrowing
With bar and pick and spade,
Tugged and bent to an iron ring
In a hole their tools had made.

A sudden give, and the earth fell clear;
A gasp, and seven blacks
Bunched and cringed, and muttered a prayer
To the thing behind their backs.

For a moon grown suddenly old and blue
Laid withered hands upon
A mouldy chest, and a bone or two
From a rotting skeleton.

A shooting star whined overhead,
The arc-lights winced and failed,
And a lonely wind from the long-time-dead
Crept to their ears and wailed.

Then terror loosed them and let them go
In a storm of flailing feet,
To tell their tale by the lantern glow
Of the shops in Sailor Street.

But when the engines summoned day
Up from oblivion,
And the gang crept back to loot the clay,
The chest and bones were gone.

II

Simon the drunkard swears he saw them going
In a shaking world of neither here nor there,
Tottering out of the shades, and slowly blowing
Across the park, lighter than harbor air,
With a wedge of the Milky Way serenely showing
Through cloven skulls under the matted hair.

Yes, he will tell you that he watched them travel
Out to te city's edge with a mouldy chest:
How they would bulk in the dark, and then unravel
Under the lights; and, when they paused to rest,
Dusted their burden free of city gravel,
And waited tense lest any should molest.

Heaving their treasure to their backs, they waded
The last salt stream; and where the forests keep
The old lost darks and silences, they faded.
Back in the early gray, steel-throated, deep,
The engines ripped the silence, and the jaded,
Driven city stumbled from its sleep.

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

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