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Sorrow Home


My roots are deep in southern life; deeper than John Brown
        or Nat Turner or Robert Lee. I was sired and weaned
        in a tropic world. The palm tree and banana leaf,
        mango and coconut, breadfruit and rubber trees know
        me.


Warm skies and gulf blue streams are in my blood. I belong
        with the smell of fresh pine, with the trail of coon, and
       the spring growth of wild onion.


I am no hothouse bulb to be reared in steam-heated flats
        with the music of El and subway in my ears, walled in
        by steel and wood and brick far from the sky.


I want the cotton fields, tobacco and the cane. I want to
        walk along with sacks of seed to drop in fallow ground.
        Restless music is in my heart and I am eager to be
       gone.


O Southland, sorrow home, melody beating in my bone and
        blood! How long will the Klan of hate, the hounds and
        the chain gangs keep me from my own?

Written by Margaret Walker (1915-1998)

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