Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson
Page 322
I heard your voice making testament
when my voice died away in a stillness.
SONG NUMBER FOUR
You are a child who sleeps and throws
his hands up over his head.
You are a strong man who walks in a
street at night. In the silence you hear little sounds.
You are a country girl and live in
Nebraska. At evening you drive cows
along a lane to your father’s barn.
* * *
I grope my way toward you in the
darkness.
I feel my way along the face of a wall.
I gather little stones and lay them along
the face of the wall.
* * *
You are an old woman without teeth.
In the stairway of an old building you
sit. You whine at me. Why do you not
arise and sing? Why do you not make a
testament to me?
* * *
You have forgotten that I crawled
into your arms as you lay in a bed. You
have forgotten that we walked in an orchard.
* * *
You are very lame. You have a twisted foot.
It is your occupation to sell
newspapers in the street before a railroad station.
Your fingers have become
like fruit that has been lying a long time
in the sun. Your voice testifies in the
city. You cry aloud in the city.
How gentle you were that time when
together we saw the little shadows playing on the face of the wall.
Do you remember how the tears ran out of your eyes?
* * *
You are a small man sitting in a dark
room in the early morning. Look, you
have killed a woman. Her body lies on
the floor. Your face is white and your
hands tremble. A testament is creeping
from between your teeth. It makes your teeth chatter.
You are a young man in the schools.
You walk up the face of a hill.
You are an insane driver of sheep.
You are a woman in a brown coat, a fish
merchant in a village, a man who throws
coal in at the mouth of a furnace, a
maiden who presses the body of her
lover against the face of the wall.
You are a bush.
You are a wind.
You are the gun of a soldier.
You are the hide that has been drawn
over the face of a drum.
You are a young birch tree swaying in a wind.
You are one who has been slain by a
falling tree in a forest.
Your body has been destroyed by a
flying mass of iron in the midst of a battle.
Your voice comes up out of a great confusion.
Listen, little lost one, I am testifying to
you as I creep along the face of a wall.
I am making a testament as I gather
stones and lay them along the face of a wall.
THE MAN WITH THE TRUMPET
I STATED it as definitely as I could.
I was in a room with them.
They had tongues like me, and hair and eyes.
I got up out of my chair and said it as
definitely as I could.
Their eyes wavered. Something slipped
out of their grasp. Had I been white and
strong and young enough I might have
plunged through walls, gone outward
into nights and days, gone onto prairies,
into distances — gone outward to the doorstep
of the house of God, gone into God’s
throne room with their hands in mine.
What I am trying to say is this...
By God I made their minds flee out of them.
Their minds came out of them as clear
and straight as anything could be.
I said they might build temples to their lives.
I threw my words at faces floating in a street.
I threw my words like stones, like building stones.
I scattered words in alleyways like seeds.
I crept at night and threw my words in
empty rooms of houses in a street.
I said that life was life, that men in streets
and cities might build temples to their souls.
I whispered words at night into a telephone.
I told my people life was sweet, that men might live.
I said a million temples might be built,
that doorsteps might be cleansed.
At their fleeing harried minds I hurled a stone.
I said they might build temples to themselves.
HUNGER
ON farms the dogs bark and old
women groan as they crawl into
beds. The scraping feet of old men make
a shuffling sound on the floors.
In the cities the street cars rattle and
bang. The motors make great moving
rivers in streets.
It is winter now but in the spring there
will be flowers in the fields and at the
edge of roadsides. The spring rains will
wash thoughts away. There will be
longstemmed flowers reaching up from shaded
places under the trees.
I am no more true than yourself, no
more alive than yourself.
You are a man and I would take hold
of your hand. You are a woman, I would
embrace you. You are a child, I would be
unashamed to stand in your presence.
The flower that is myself has a long stem.
DEATH
I DO NOT belong to the company of
those who wear velvet gowns and
look at the stars. God has not taken me
into his house to sit with him. When his
house has burned bright with lights I
have stayed in the streets.
My desire is not to ascend but to go
down. My soul does not hunger to float.
I do not wish to pass out of the animal
kingdom and into the kingdom of birds,
to fold my wings and pitch into the arms
of a wind that blows in from the sea. The
voice of the wind does not call to me.
When I am strong and the noise of the
cities roars in my ears it is my desire to be
a little mole that works under the ground.
I would creep beneath the roots of the grass.
I would go under the foundations of buildings.
I would creep like a drop of rain along
the far, hair-like roots of a tree.
When springs come and strength surges
into my body I would creep beneath the
roots of grasses far out into the fields.
I would go under fields that are plowed.
I would creep down under the black
fields. I would go softly, touching and
feeling my way.
I would be little brother to a kernel of
corn that is to feed the bodies of men.
THE HEALER
MY body does not belong to me.
My body belongs to tired women
who have found no lovers.
It belongs to half men and half women.
My body belongs to those who lust and
those who shrink from lusting.
My body belongs to the roots of trees.
It shall be consumed with fire on a far horizon.
The smoke that arises from my burning
body shall make the western skies golden.
My body belongs to a Virginia mob that
runs to kill negroes. It belongs to a w
oman
whose husband was killed in a railroad
wreck. It belongs to an old man dying
by a fire in a wood, to a negress who is
on her knees scrubbing floors, to a
millionaire who drives an automobile.
My body belongs to one whose son has
killed a man and has been sent to a
prison. It belongs to those who have the
lust for killing and to those who kill.
My body is a stick a strong man has
stuck in the ground. It is a post a drunkard has leaned against.
My body is a cunning wind. It is a
thought in the night, a wound that bleeds,
the breath of a god, the quavering end of a song.
MAN SPEAKING TO A WOMAN
YOU HAVE come to me from a tall
awkward city. You have come to
me from the sister cities of the north. On
your way here to me you have run in and
out of a thousand cities that lie like unhatched eggs on the prairies.
You are a distraught woman with
tangled hair and once you owned a house
in a street where wagons and motor
trucks went up and down.
I am glad you are tangled in a web of thought.
I am glad your thoughts have driven you out of the cities.
You have come up a hill to a place where I sit.
I am glad.
I will take the end of a thought in my
hand and walk back and forth.
I will climb into trees.
I will run in holes under the ground.
I will weave a web over yourself.
You shall sit on a stone under a wall
where a gateway leads into the valley of
truth and as I weave you into oblivion I
will tell you a tale.
Long ago, on a day in October, a woman
like you came here to the face of the
wall. The shadow of many perplexities
lay like a film over her eyes. She sat on
the stone with her back to the wall as
you sit now. My father, who was then a
young man, laid long threads of thought over her body.
A stone fell out of the wall and the woman was killed.
The wall is strong but a stone fell out of the wall.
It made a great noise.
A noise like the firing of guns was heard
to the North and the South.
In the Valley there was a day set aside
for the cleansing of doorsteps.
The sound of the tinkling of bells came over the wall.
A stone fell out of the wall on the head of a woman.
She fled from my father.
She fled like a frightened bird over the wall.
A DREAMER
I HAVE no desire to fathom the infinite.
It is my desire to walk up and
down in fields and forests and to knock
with bare knuckles on the doorposts of
houses. As I sit on a log at the edge of an
Illinois town the factories and the houses
in which things are bought and sold
crumble into a dust so fine that my breath
can blow it away.
I live in a day and in a place where
pigs are sold on the King’s doorstep.
What I know you also know. Foul smells
arise out of the streets of my cities. The
woman who passes me clad in a fur coat
has a pair of handcuffs concealed under
her gown.
In my arrogant pride I have said to
myself — I shall run through life like a
little lost dog, I shall put my cold nose
against the bodies of people.
I have no end in life beyond that of a
bare-legged boy who climbs into a leafy
tree. I have a hope that when I have
climbed to the topmost branch and have
put out my hand it will for a moment
graze the wings of a thought.
I am a beggar and will accept any
word you may choose to bring me. I am
a man gone blind. I am an aged man
with a beard who carries a staff and strikes
with it on a pavement.
Someone has struck me a hard blow.
The drums of my ears have been destroyed by the scream of a whistle.
It would be better for me to be a beggar
on the doorstep of your house.
I should be one who accepts the singing
of the wind in the hair of one who has
been hanged as the voice of a god. When
you arise from your bed in the morning
and come to your kitchen door you should
find me sitting there with bowed head.
I should be able to whisper to you a word
out of the departed night.
When I have grown beyond my love
of God I shall grow in my comprehension of you.
There shall be a way found by which I
may go through a street to the door of
God’s house. I shall find words to lay on
my lips. I shall find words to speak at
the door of God’s house.
MAN WALKING ALONE
THE NIGHTS in the valley of the
Mississippi River have the eyes of
an owl. I have risen from the place
where I slept under a tree but cannot
shake the sleep out of my eyes. The
nights in the valley of the Mississippi
River are staring nights. They look at
men with the pupils extended. The skies
are empty over the cities and the plains.
The skies have not formulated a thought
that I can breathe into my being. In the
whole valley of the Mississippi River
there is no bed of thought in which I can lie.
There are farm women living in houses
that stand beside dusty roads in Illinois
and Iowa. In Indiana and Ohio there
are many towns. In Michigan — far up
where the valley is no more and where
the cold finger of the north touches the
earth in September — there are men living
who wear heavy boots and fur caps and
who walk all day under naked trees.
Everywhere are men and women who
arouse wonder in me. I have awakened
the feeling of wonder in myself. I have
awakened from sleeping under a tree.
TESTAMENT OF AN OLD MAN
I AM AN old man sitting in the sun
before the door of my house. The
wind blows sharply, shaking golden leaves
off the trees. It is late October and cold
but I am not cold. My house protects
me. The fingers of the wind cannot find
me. The sun plays gently over my body.
The dying fires within me are a little
stirred. The blood mounts up through
my body into my brain. My brain is fed
with warm blood. It awakens.
King David, when he was old, could
not be warmed by the virgins lying with
him in a bed but I am warmed by the
soft kiss of the sun. The sun is my sweetheart.
There is nothing in the world so
fair as the sun. The sun is my virgin.
The virgins that were brought to King
David in old times looked at him and the
blood did not mount into their bodies.
They lay in bed with the King but they
did not warm him. There was no warmth
in them. My virgin, the sun, comes very
close. She t
akes me into her arms. She
warms me. The body of the sun is pressed
close to my body. The sun’s breath,
fragrant with love, warms me.
My brain that has been for many days
asleep, runs madly. It runs down across
plains. My brain is a hound that has
come out of its kennel. It runs with long
strides, swiftly, like a shadow. It runs as a
shadow runs, swiftly, o’er wheat and
corn fields, o’er towns and cities, o’er seas.
My awakened brain is a hound dog
come out of its kennel. It is a hound dog,
white and silent and swift.
My brain runs backward and forward,
it runs on into cities the foundations of
which have never been laid, it runs o’er
fields that shall be planted at the hands
of men not yet come from the womb, not conceived yet.
My hound brain is a whispering wind.
It runs backward and forward. It runs
into new lives. It runs back into old lives.
It has run beside Jesus the Prince as
he walked alone on a mountain. It has
lain all night at the door of a tent where
Cæsar was encamped on a hillside in Gaul.
My hound mind lay whining all night
at the feet of the Cæsar. We ran out of
the camp. We ran into cities. We ran to
where Caesar’s wife lay in a bed. As
Cæsar slept we groveled and fought with
other dogs in the street of the mighty
city of Rome.
My hound mind has seen cities rise out
of the plains and it has seen cities destroyed.
It has seen tall oaks grow,
mature and decay where Ruth went to
glean in the harvest. It once lived in a
slave who carried great stones to build a
cathedral to the glory of God.
My hound first came into my body
when I was a lad tramping the fields.
It went with me to live in the towns.
Through a long life it has stayed in its
kennel but now it is fleeing away.
Look how it runs. O’er towns and
cities it runs. It runs like a shadow o’er
the seas. Some day it will not return to
its kennel. My old body, now warmed
by the sun, shall be put under ground.
Old words will be said. Quivering voices
shall sing quivering songs. My hound