SHERWOOD ANDERSON
THE CORNFIELDS
I am pregnant with song. My body aches but do not betray me. I will sing songs and hide them away. I will tear them into bits and throw them in the street. The streets of my city are full of dark holes. I will hide my songs in the holes of the streets. In the darkness of the night I awoke and the bands that bind me were broken. I was determined to bring old things into the land of the new. A sacred vessel I found and ran with it into the fields, into the long fields where the corn rustles. All of the people of my time were bound with chains. They had forgotten the long fields and the standing corn. They had forgotten the west winds. Into the cities my people had gathered. They had become dizzy with words. Words had choked them. They could not breathe. On my knees I crawled before my people. I debased myself. The excretions of their bodies I took for my food. Into the ground I went and my body died. I emerged in the corm, in the long cornfields. My head arose and was touched by the west wind. The light of old things, of beautiful old things, awoke in me. In the cornfields the sacred vessel is set up. I will renew in my people the worship of gods. I will set up for a king before them. A king shall arise before my people. The sacred vessel shall be filled with the sweet oil of the corn. The flesh of my body is become good. With your white teeth you may bite me. My arm that was withered has become strong. In the quiet night streets of my city old things are awake. I awoke and the bands that bind me were broken. I was determined to bring love into the hearts of my people. The sacred vessel was put into my hands and I ran with it into the fields. In the long cornfields the sacred vessel is set up. CHICAGO I am mature, a man child, in America, in the West, in the great valley of the Mississippi. My head arises above the cornfields. I stand up among the new corn. I am a child, a confused child in a confused world. There are no clothes made that fit me. The minds of men cannot clothe me. Great projects arise within me. I have a brain and it is cunning and shrewd. I want leisure to become beautiful, but there is no leisure. Men should bathe me with prayers and with weeping, but there are no men. Now — from now — from to-day I shall do deeds of fiery meaning. Songs shall arise in my throat and hurt me. I am a little thing, a tiny little thing on the vast prairies. I know nothing. My mouth is dirty. I cannot tell what I want. My feet are sunk in the black swampy land, but I am a lover. I love life. In the end love shall save me. The days are long — it rains — it snows. I am an old man. I am sweeping the ground where my grave shall be. Look upon me, my beloved, my lover who does not come. I am raw and bleeding, a new thing in a new world. I run swiftly o'er bare fields. Listen — there is the sound of the tramping of many feet. Life is dying in me. I am old and palsied. I am just at the beginning of my life. Do you not see that I am old, O my beloved? Do you not understand that I cannot sing, that my songs choke me? Do you not see that I am so young I cannot find the word in the confusion of words? SONG OF CEDRIC THE SILENT Songs come to my lips every hour. I shall hurl my songs down the winds of the world. Like a blow, a kiss, a caress, my songs shall come. Like a guest I am come into the house, the terrible house. So gentle and quiet I come they do not know me. The son of Irwin and Emma I am, here in America, come into a kingship. I would destroy and build up. I would set up new kings. The impatience has gone out of me. Hatred and evil I have put far away. Do you remember when you crept close to me, wanting to touch my body? What a night — how it rained. How could you know, how could you know in me there was oblivion? The terrible poison of my body has laid waste the land. I embrace Hell for you, go to my damnation for my love of you. Into the land of my fathers, from Huron to Keokuk, beauty shall come— out of the black ground, out of the deep black ground. Squaw man, red man, old and decrepit, into the mighty wheels of the engine I hurl these songs. Twenty weeks I lay on the bleak hillside, waiting for you. When you came and spoke how I trembled. Down the lane, through the woods to the meadows you ran. Then I knew. Broad long fields. Wheat that stands up. Cedric, the son of Irwin and Emma, stand up. Give your life, give your soul to America now. Cedric, be strong. THE STRANGER Her eyes are like the seeds of melons. Her breasts are thin and she walks awkwardly. I am in love with her. With her I have adventured into a new love. In all the world there is no such love as I have for her. I took hold of her shoulder and walked beside her. We went out of the city into the fields. By the still road we went and it was night. We were long alone together. The bones of her shoulder are thin. The sharp bone of her shoulder has left a mark on my hand. I am come up into the wind like a ship. Her thin hand is laid hold of me. My land where the corn nods has become my land. I am come up into the wind like a ship and the thin hand of woman is laid hold of me. THE BEAM Eighteen men stood by me in my fall — long men — strong men — see the oil on their boots. I was a guest in the house of my people. Through the years I clung, taking hold of their hands in the darkness. It rained and the roar of machines was incessant. Into the house of my people quiet would not come. Eighteen men stood by me in my fall. Through their breasts bars were driven. With wailing and with weeping I ran back and forth. Then I died. Out of the door of the house of my people I ran. But the eighteen men stood by me in my fall. SONG OF THE SOUL OF CHICAGO On the bridges, on the bridges — swooping and rising, whirling and circling — back to the bridges, always the bridges. I'll talk forever — I'm damned if I'll sing. Don't you see that mine is not a singing people? We're just a lot of muddy things caught up by the stream. You can't fool us. Don't we know ourselves? Here we are, out here in Chicago. You think we're not humble? You're a liar. We are like the sewerage of our town, swept up stream by a kind of mechanical triumph — that's what we are. On the bridges, on the bridges — wagons and motors, horses and men — not flying, just tearing along and swearing. By God we'll love each other or die trying. We'll get to understanding too. In some grim way our own song shall work through. We'll stay down in the muddy depths of our stream — we will. There can't any poet come out here and sit on the shaky rail of our ugly bridges and sing us into paradise. We're finding out — that's what I want to say. We'll get at our own thing out here or die for it. We're going down, numberless thousands of us, into ugly oblivion. We know that. But say, bards, you keep off our bridges. Keep out of our dreams, dreamers. We want to give this democracy thing they talk so big about a whirl. We want to see if we are any good out here, we Americans from all over hell. That's what we want. |
Sherwood Anderson
Photo sourced from
Poetry Foundation
Sherwood Anderson lived and worked most of his life in the Midwest—in Springfield and Cleveland, Ohio, and in Chicago, Illinois—at the dawn of the 20th Century. Anderson transformed the nature of fictional prose by infusing his stories with poetic imagery and symbolism in creative ways never before achieved—culminating in his masterpiece, WInesburg, Ohio (1919). We celebrate his writing a century later with some Mid-American Chants excerpted from his public domain work on the Internet Archive.
