From No Lonesome Road: Selected Prose and Poems by Don West (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), page 147: THERE'S ANGER IN THE LAND Don WestNote: In the summer of 1950 I picked up a Negro hitchhiker in South Georgia and brought him across the Chattahoochee at Eufala, Alabama. As we crossed the river he began telling me the story of how his brother was lynched and his body cut down from the limb and flung across the doorstep of his mother's shack—broken, bleeding and lifeless. Oh, there's grieving in the plum-grove And there's weeping in the weeds, There is sorrow in the shanty Where a broken body bleeds. For there's been another lynching And another grain of sand Swells the mountain of resentment— Oh, there's anger in the land! And a woman broods in silence Close beside an open door Flung across the flimsy door-step Lies a corpse upon the floor! You'll not ask me why I'm silent; Thus the woman spoke to me. Her two eyes blazed forked anger And her throat throbbed agony. Let the wind go crying yonder In the tree-tops by the spring, Let its voice be soft and feeling Like it was a living thing. Once my heart could cry in sorrow Now it lies there in the floor In the ashes by the hearth-stone— They can't hurt it anymore! Did you ever see a lynching, Ever see a frenzied mob Mill around a swaying body When it's done the hellish job? Yes, the night was full of terror And the deeds were full of wrong Where they hung him to a beech-wood After beating with a thong. There's grieving in the plum-grove And there's sobbing in the sand, There is sorrow in the shanties— And there's anger in the land! [This poem was originally published in The Road is Rocky by Don West (1951). It was set to music by Hedy West. [Don West (1906-1992) was the father of Hedy West (1938-2005).]
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