Henry-Music

by Henry Crowder

Poems
by Richard Aldington Harold Acton Walter Lowenfels Nancy Cunard Samuel Beckett

I Equatorial Way Nancy Cunard

Not yet satisfied But I'll be satisfied With the days I slaved for Hope, Now I'm cuttin all the ropes Gettin in my due of dough From ofays that'll miss me so Going Going where the arrow points due south I don't mean your red neck farms I don't mean your Jim Crow trains I mean I mean Gaboon I don't mean your cotton lands Ole stuff coons in Dixie Band I've said I've said Gaboon This ain't no white man's nigger Nor was but I've grown bigger The further away from you Further longer away from you My cracker moon Doin' my own stuff now Equator Pole and Pole Fixin' to board the prow And let the Ocean roll and roll And roll me over even To where the Congo waters roll Won't take from the old land But twelve bottles of gin Won't leave on the old lands But my cheque cashed in, Then maker clear to the Black Folks They can't but win Goin' to drink to the last damnation Of the son o' bitch U.S.A. Goin' to send for a conflagration From down equatorial way Feelin' kind just as this moment Kind'a callin' in my debts for pay Last advice to the crackers: Bake your own white meat Last advices to the lynchers Last advice to the lynchers: Hang your brother by the feet One sitting pretty Black man is a million strong on heat.

Goin' to beat up Fear on the octaves Tear the crackers limb from limb Goin' to take on each every vengeance Drum one blood blasting hymn And laugh laugh laugh in the shadows Louder'n Death I'll be watching him

II Madrigal Richard Aldington

Oh! by what rite shall I upbraid Beauty that will not let me rest? What charm shall make to fade Those cheeks as fragrantly demure as morn And quench the perfume of her flowering breast? Alll night I waked for lorn I waked for lorn Hearkening the lamentation of the rain; But day light brought no slumber to my pain no slumber to my pain

III Creed Walter Lowenfels

When the world goes voodoo and the dog gods win I ask my last bone to cache its spirit in a down growing root When souls of all of us are rattled at the portals of kingdom Come save that spirit, bone! The people of the U.S.A. have a date with God. Give me a witch doctor Bury me in a jungle, Beat on my tombs, rain gods.

IV From the Only Poet to Shining Whore Samuel Beckett

Rahab of the holy battlements, bright dripping shaft in the bright bright patient pearl-brow dawn-dusk lover of the sun Puttanina mia! You hid them happy in the high flax, pale before the fords of Jordan, and the dry red waters, and you lowered a pledge of scarlet hemp. Oh radiant, oh angry, oh Beatrice, she foul with the victory of the bloodless fingers and proud, and you, Beatrice, mother, sister; daughter, beloved fierce pale flame of doubt, and God's sorrow, and my sorrow

V From Tiresias Harold Acton

Why have I a body and a head When it is blind, as good as dead? Eyes could not answer when my heart said See! And I was silent with the world, Absent, and always present in the bone, Calm as a god and sombrely alone, There was a sword struck through my irises. Coplour had long been slain Tapping my stick and groping through the hours, Running my hand alond the ribs of sand. Crooking my fingers in a bowl of flow'rs, A hidden landscape surged into the mind Remnants of sea and shore; I could command. Bare shapes that were a balsam to my pain The robes of light were lost upon these lids And yet I knew when they wrapt my limbs. And felt their damask printed on my skin, and the sun brushed me with his fiery wing So I forgot; So I began to sing

VI Memory Blues Nancy Cunard

Back again between the odds and ends Back again between the odds and ends What once was gay's now sad what was unknown's now friends The waiter waits, he'll wait all night And when you're tight he'll set you right Back is to morrow or even yesterday... Time plays the piper but what do we pay? O Buf sur le Toit you had one song But when I look in the mirrors it all goes wrong Memory Blues and only 'back today! I'm a miserable travellin' man Each Capital's not more than one caf Where in you lose where in you lose Yourself in what you have and have had Why worry choose Why worry choose? O Buf sur le Toit you had one song But when I look in the mirrors it all goes wrong Memory Blues and only 'back today! I'm a miserable travellin' man