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“Land of The Free and Home of The Brave?”

by MarshaRose
July 4, 2006

The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States.  Francis Scott Key, a 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, wrote the lyrics in 1814 after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland by British ships in Chesapeake Bay during the War of 1812.  It became well known as a patriotic song to the tune of a popular English drinking song, "To Anacreon in Heaven."  It was recognized for official use by the United States Navy (1889) and by the White House 1916), and was made the national anthem by a Congressional resolution on March 3, 1931.

Most of us cannot sing the song and those who can, only sing one verse.

Did you ever wonder why, if the song has four verses, only the first is commonly sung?

Well I’ll tell you.

Growing up in Baltimore, the place is so rich in history.  From America's infancy, democracy's first dream to today's realities . . . Baltimore always figured in the struggle.

My family has lived in Maryland since 1773.  My Great-grandfather, John H. Murphy, Sr., founded a newspaper more than 115 years ago (The Afro-American Newspapers). Moving to Baltimore in 1941, I learned at a very early age about being a Negro (that is what we were in those days).  In the 40's as a student in "segregated" elementary schools I was taught to hate the Jews because “they were Christ killers” and in the middle of war, hate the Germans and the Japanese, while the white man hated me—how absurd!

Every morning in our “separate but equal?” school, we stood to pledge allegiance to the flag – “with liberty and justice for all.” Justice? And oh, the field trips—Historic Baltimore is an abundant resource for teachers—the many many field trips to Fort McHenry—we ran across the ramparts, climbed on the cannons, peeped into the dungeons, imagined the bombs bursting in air—and the flag is still waving.

Oh, how many times had we as children, fought that war—Baltimore being the only school District in America where the children knew about the War of 1812 let alone the Battle of Baltimore?  Each time we held our heads up high and sang,—

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?

Not ever giving one thought to the mockery of the words –

No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

At that same time America was at war using segregated troops—some African-American soldiers were lynched in uniform.  Black newspapers were charged with sedition for “giving aid and comfort to the enemy” for telling the truth about discrimination in the U.S.

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Even as an adult I climbed on the cannon to watch the new flag with it's 50th star being raised at Fort McHenry. As we celebrated the taking of an indigenous peoples’ land—again not seeing the travesty in the words—

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?

Would you sing these verses of the song?

Finally, People stood up—enough was enough—enough discrimination—enough disparity—enough injustice—enough inequality—enough of an unjust war—the words rang true—

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

“None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.”  (Pearl S. Buck)

Here is the full song – all four verses- for your singing pleasure — [below the fold]

Speaking Of Suheir Hammad

The press release in my last post quotes Palestinian-American Poet Suheir Hammad, who went to New Orleans as a visiting volunteer. Hammad also has written a moving poem about NOLA, called "a prayer band," which Elisa has posted at Two Feet In.

Oh What A Beautiful City

Pete Seeger continues to be a big favorite for my toddler. Standing in the chair in front of our stereo, he pulls the Pete Seeger CD of choice out of the stack, gets the disc out of the case, opens the CD player drawer, places the disc in, closes the drawer—and finds his favorite songs by himself.

This all started with him simply calling out the names of songs or artists he wanted to hear and repeating the name with great insistence, until we relented. Then he started asking for CDs to put into the player himself. And now, most recently, he's been cuing up the desired songs without help.

The first song we saw him do this with was Sweet Potatoes, on We Shall Overcome: The Complete Carnegie Hall Concert (1963). Our little boy figured out how to press the track advance button three times to get to track 3 on disc 2. What really blew our minds, though, was when he figured out how to get to track 18 on the Children's Concert At Town Hall (Abiyoyo). I'm pretty sure that at 2 1/2 he hasn't learned to count to 18 but rather has learned to recognize what the track number for Abiyoyo looks like in the CD player display. Still, it's pretty darn cool . . .

It's a good thing I like Pete Seeger so much. Instead of getting sick of the recordings, I've been finding new pleasures in songs I hadn't paid as much attention to when I was younger. The first song that struck me this way was Pete's rendition of the the John Lair song, Little Birdie. The liner notes say Pete learned the song in the 1940s from one the Coon Creek Girls, who were Lair's proteges. Pete's mountain-style banjo on this track is hypnotic, and the lyrics are beautiful. When I tried to find a transcription of them online, there were many versions of the song, but none with words that Pete sings on this recording—which makes me think that it was Pete himself who came up with this most deeply poetic and mysterious version of the song that I've come to love so well:

Little birdie, little birdie,
What makes you fly so high?
It's because I am a true little bird
And I do not fare to die?

Little birdie, little birdie,
What makes your wings so blue?
It's because I've been a grieving
Grievin' after you.

Little birdie, little birdie,
What makes your head so red?
Well after all that I've been through
It's a wonder I ain't dead.

Little birdie, little birdie,
Come sing to me a song.
I've a short while to be here,
And a long time to be gone.

In the middle two verses, the movement between the images and the states of mind and emotion they signify reminds me of reading William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Exprience (of all things). Maybe that's just the ballad tradition bubbling up through both the 19th and 20th centuries, but I can't really say.

Now to the song that got me writing this post in the first place: Oh What A Beautiful City, as performed on We Shall Overcome. You can read the lyrics of a different version here, but first just sit back and listen.

The credits say Pete's version is as adapted and arranged by Marian Hicks. There is almost nothing about her on the internet, and there do not seem to be any recordings to her name. In looking around, I discovered a noted arrangement by Edward Boatner, who seems like an interesting figure in Black musical history whom I hadn't heard of before.

I really want to know about Marian Hicks. If any readers can tell me more about her, or if anyone knows good recordings of Oh What A Beautiful City by African American gospel artists, or any other interesting recordings, or anything else about the song's history, please let me know in the comments.

UPDATE
My wife recalls reading in Rise Up Singing that Marian Hicks was an African American friend of Pete Seeger's family and that he learned to sing the song from her. I don't actually have copy of RUS, but I'll check this out as soon as I can.

CORRECTION
Second stanza of Little Birdie corrected from "dreaming" and "dreamin'" to "grieving" and "grievin'."

Listening To The Many Voices Of Haifa

Did you hear this yesterday on All Things Considered?

It's a short radio essay by Andrei Codrescu [realplayer] about his recent visit to Israel for a poetry conference. I said essay, but really it's an amazing prose poem that speaks volumes about the historical importance, the beauty and the wonder of the Jewish homeland and the tragic brutality of its occupation of the Palestinian homeland—all in 3 minutes and 28 seconds.

If you're like me, a loving supporter of Israel's existence and deeply opposed to the occupation, you know that there is precious little public space alloted for the sort of understanding that Codrescu packs into his marvelous images.

Last Week Was An Interesting Week

Two Fridays ago (4/8), my mother called to tell me she had just talked with a retired journalist, named Jeff Prugh. Apparently Jeff had come across my posts on the Roosevelt Tatum story, and he wanted to talk with me. Between my father's name and the mentions of Delmar, NY in the Tatum series (I called it "From Delmar to Bombingham"), Jeff figured out how to reach my mother.

Jeff called because he had researched this same story, starting three decades ago, interviewing many of the principle figures who were involved, including the likes of Macon Weaver, the US Attorney who drummed up the case against Tatum in the first place. If you haven't followed the links, or read the posts before, Roosevelt Tatum claimed to have witnessed two Birmingham Police officers planting the bombs that destroyed AD and Naomi King's home on the night of May 11, 1963. The Kings and their five children were in the house when the bombs went off and escaped alive only by good luck. After Tatum made his allegations and made several official statements to this effect, he abruptly retracted his testimony and was then prosecuted for false testimony. Tatum was convicted swiftly and sentenced to a year and a day in prison.

Both Jeff and I—as well as Diane McWhorter—have concluded that Tatum was bullied out of his original testimony through a rigged polygraph test, administered by the FBI in Birmingham. Jeff was astonished to find my work in part because until he read this post, he'd made the same mistake that Macon Weaver had in assuming that the Greenberg mentioned in FBI documents was the famous Civil Rights Movement attorney, Jack Greenberg.

When my mother called two Fridays ago, I was lying in bed, trying to recover from a bad cold in time for a job interview on Monday the 11th. I was still under the weather all weekend, and I wanted to use my spare time to prepare for the interview, so I didn't end up calling Jeff back until Tuesday night (4/12).

It was exciting to compare notes with Jeff because we'd reached so many of the same conclusions from our separate research and because we had each learned things that the other hadn't. While Jeff had spoken to many of the people involved—a number of whom are now dead—I had succeeded in getting additional FBI documents on the case declassified. His research led him more deeply into corruption in Alabama regarding Tatum's case; mine had revealed new details about what happened while Tatum was in Washington, DC with my father and AD King (the next part in the Delmar to Bombingham series, still in the works).

Jeff has done some very interesting work on Dan Moore, a federal marshall who tried to expose the rigging of the grand jury that convicted Tatum. In 1999 Jeff published his research in the Marin Independent Journal , the last paper he worked at before he retired (before that Jeff was a LA Times reporter for twenty-one years, including six as Atlanta Bureau Chief). In 2004, he published an expanded version as part of the King family memoir by Alveda King, AD and Naomi's oldest daughter, who was twelve at the time of the bombing. Here's an excerpt from the version in Marin Indpendent Journal:

In June [1963] while Rooselvelt Tatum is being questioned in Washington, Moore becomes incensed when [sic] learns that his boss, U.S. Marshal Peyton Norville, and Judge Allgood participate in selecting the federal grand jury that would indict Tatum.

In sworn testimony, Moore would say that he told a Washington-based official of the U.S. Marshals Service that his boss had bragged to him about putting his son-in-law on the grand jury.

A Justice Department examiner's report in 1964 would say that "...the jury box was one name short. The then Marshal, Mr. Norville, knowing his son-in-law to be a qualified voter, wrote his name on a piece of paper and put into the box. When the Marshal returned to his office he passed this information to the Chief [Moore] in an informal conversation . . . ."

In 1964, Moore would be subpoenaed by an attorney who represented eight white supremacists and who had been tipped about Moore's allegations that U.S. Marshal Norville had told him he had placed his son-in-law on the grand jury. The eight members of the militant National States Rights Party had been indicted by the Tatum grand jury for disrupting efforts to desegregate some of Birmingham's schools.

After the attorney takes Moore's deposition alleging that the grand jury had been improperly impaneled, Moore is called to Judge Allgood's chambers, and, according to Moore, the judge tells him: "You've got me backed against the wall now. What the hell am I supposed to do?

Moore to Judge Allgood: "Throw 'em all out! Dismiss all the indictments [including Tatum's]!

Amid allegations that the grand jury was tainted, the judge drops charges against the whites—publicly citing "fundamental deficiencies" in the indictment—but the judge doesn't let Moore's testimony impugning the grand jury get in the way of the case the feds had built against Roosevelt Tatum.

Dan Moore continues to press for propriety in the federal courthouse in Birmingham. However, he becomes persona non grata. He refuses an offer of a lifetime pension of $3,971 a year ($331 monthly) if he would retire on the spot, after nearly 20 years with the U.S. Marshals Service, and claim what he says would be a bogus disability. He would describe the offer as "a crooked scheme designed to steal public money and to cover up what I knew about obstruction of justice in the Tatum grand jury."

            ***         ***         ***
Earlier the same Tuesday evening that I spoke with Jeff Prugh (4/12), I found a voicemail on my cell phone after I got out of yoga class. The call was from Bob Adamenko, an old friend of my dad's. Back in October, Bob stumbled on Hungry Blues posts from July about Ray Charles and the 1963 concert he played in Birmingham, organized by my father, as a benefit to send Birmingham residents to the March on Washington. In the comments to one post, Bob wrote:

ben, I was a friend of your wondeful father. your mom would rebember me and my wife elaine. please call me at home. after your dad moved up to albany with the family we stayed in touch and eventually lost contact. I was on line doing some research on the liberal party and i came upon hungry blues. please call me any time. I would love to talk to you. Bob Adamenko-[phone # deleted for commentor's privacy] ps. I have the negatives of that show in birminham (emphasis added)

I called Bob immediately, of course, and we had a great, wide ranging conversation—Birmingham, Ray Charles, Nina Simone, Liberal Party, CORE, James Farmer, the Lower East Side . . .

Bob had been in charge of security for the concert and had taken pictures. Bob was emphatic that I should have the negatives. "If anyone should have them, you should. They belong to you . . ."

Until last week, that was the last I'd heard from Bob. But then there he was on my voicemail, saying he'd been in the hospital again but he is doing better now and he needs my address so he can send my the pictures. I called Bob as soon as I got home from class. I couldn't catch everything he told me about the negatives because my son Aaron (who is now two, by the way) was resisting bed time, and exuberantly showing off his command of two word phrases and multi-syllabic words as he climbed into his high chair to join me and Ruth in our ritual, post-yoga class take out.
            ***         ***         ***
Last Friday (4/15), I received some interesting mail: 1 oversized, padded envelope, from Jeff Prugh; 1 9 x 12 manilla envelop, from Bob Adamenko; 1 flat, cardboard mailer, 6 x 8 1/2, from Jonathan David Jackson.

Jeff sent me a copy of Alveda King's book and a photocopy of the Marin Independent Journal article (not archived on the paper's website). Bob sent me several contact sheets from the Birmingham negatives, a contact sheet of negatives of scenes from Washington, DC in 1963, the day before the March on Washington, two large prints, and a letter of recommendation that my dad wrote for him in 1976, while Dad was Secretary to the New York State Tax Commission. Jonathan sent me his new chapbook of poems (also see this post).

I spoke with Bob on Saturday, to tell him his envelope arrived. He told me he's sending the negatives next.

One of the prints from Bob was a press photo (at right) from John Lindsay's first appearance after he won the New York City Mayor's race in 1965. Lindsay was a Liberal Republican, with a capital "L" and a capital "R." That is, he ran in 1965 on a joint Liberal/GOP ticket. In 1965, my father was Assistant to Executive Director and Legislative Representative for the Liberal Party of New York, and he was one of the driving forces behind Lindsay's mayoral campaign. In this victory photo, you can see the Liberal Party banner overhead. In front, from left to right, it's Robert Adamenko, Paul Greenberg, and John Lindsay.

I'm not at all certain, but I think that might be my mother, very partially visible behind Bob's left shoulder, standing next to Dad.

Update 7/9/05: Jonathan David Jackson's website is down; links to it removed for now.

New Poetry Chapbook: We All Sell The Shadow, by Jonathan David Jackson

My dear and talented friend Jonathan has just published a chapbook of his poems.

Jonathan has a website where you find an announcement of the chapbook, two sample poems, and other related items.

[Update 7/9/05: Jonathan David Jackson's website is down; links to it removed for now.]

Jonathan and I attended the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars together eleven years ago. If he were still the same writer he was then, I could be nothing less than effusive about a chapbook of his work. But the two poems on his website suggest a marvelous expansion in his range, with all the meanings that can imply: range of reference, range of voice, range of mind . . . Now a big range could mean expansiveness with no center. But the two poems on Jonathan's site are to my way of thinking entirely within the range of the voices and minds of deeply realized and starkly individual dramatis personae. With Jonathan's permission, I leave you with one of the poems right here:

Directions to Burn



A child, especially
should not think of death or anything South
of chins and collarbones—only books and music, the kind
with strings. Questions should be answered. Fantasies unchecked.
You’re like a child. What do you know? Why would you possibly want
to go to a place that everyone condemns? But everyone wants everything—
even rich children are gigantic, blazing yet unburned. It’s the 80s.
How can you walk uncrushed among giants? You must go

where no one thinks to look. You have learned
how to do this at the free public library early in the evening,
raising your small voice to the gray attendant, Can you show me
the picture books about pharaohs? …the kings you have only seen
airbrushed in Ebony Magazines. Strange that the curled
old woman at the desk should not part her hair
to answer. So on your own you pull out
drawers brimming with yellowing
cards and squiggles. Everything
under Civilization

is on the second floor; then hot up the elevator,
where the biggest book smells sharp of glue and flipping
through you see him, the mummy prince doubled up to fit
in his shining sarcophagus, knees to chin, hands crossed over breasts,
robes swallowing him with snake-trellis and ivory clips. Directions
were never a problem in old Egypt. Priests planted anemone
by a sick woman’s house; kept whole petrified clans
in tombs of white origanum; cleaned everything
with scarabs; drew crisscrossing translucent
chalcedony, right to left, left to right, up, down,
inside, outside…soon you are asleep, wet
forehead between glossy pages

then the closing buzzer sounds. Face creased,
fingers numb, you hit the streets…You are not dreaming.
This is the nation’s capitol. Stuffed in corners around the library’s entrance
stand winter coats and rusty shopping carts—people so small you only see them
in the evening when the suits have left downtown.
It is at least a one-minute stroll to the bus stop through
the girlie shops, signs teasing, and on quarter
reel movie row, twelve glimmering
palaces say, girls girls girls—

Right now bulldozers clear
the area like there’s been a plague.
But years ago if you had to handle business
you took yourself there. The first time I went on a dare—100 bucks
in three hours. 15 years old. Boom box says, more, more, more—
you’ll remember all the songs when no one sings them anymore.
Boss men wait in Buicks in alleys for their girls. It’s the 80s.
It’s capital. Even shemale free agents, make 30, 40—
hell, I can pull 60 in two hours. Watch out
for the politicians on the late dinner hour.
I can turn a congressman
in his Town Car in five
and be back on
the block

in time to meet
a creep who has the nerve to say, Come on & go with me
‘round the corner. You know the way.

Like that, m’ blade’s out, shining this close
to his pink eye. Let me introduce myself, I tell him,
nails along his arms.

I know what it takes—5 foot 6
but I’ll bring your head to your knees.
Now burn these directions.
You got what
you need.

In The Mood of Elegy

the spin of the earth impaled a silhouette of the sun on the steeple
and I gotta hear the same sermon all of the time now from you people
why are staring into outer space crying
(Elliott Smith)

My friend Lisa died in her late 30s the day before yesterday, suddenly, of a brain aneurism. My friend Larry's mother died this morning of cancer, in old age. Lisa was ill with rheumatoid arthritis since her 20s, but no one expected this.

I was practicing yoga tonight. My practice has been very steady for a couple of years now, usually without more than a couple of days off in any given week. Because of travel and other circumstances, tonight's practice was the first time in seven days.

In a simple kneeling pose (adomukha virasana) I curled my toes under to push up and raise my tailbone vertically and settle back into downward facing dog (adomukha svanasana). Before there was any verticle movement at all, just in the simple act of bringing the pads of my feet into contact with the floor, I felt a wave of emotion, as if this somewhat more precise than usual repetition of a ritualized physical action was affirming something vast and elemental.

When people we love die, we need to affirm the good we mean to strive for. We feel guilty for getting diverted, for losing sight of our right intentions.

In 1995 my father had surgery to remove his bladder. Recovery from a resulting infection laid him low. He became depressed and didn't want to eat much of anything. He was extremely withdrawn. It was hard for anyone to reach him. I needed some way to make him know I understood him. One morning, I came into his sick room and read from Walt Whitman:

It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw its patches down upon me also,
The best I had done seem'd to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?
Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,
I am he who knew what it was to be evil,
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
Blabb'd, blush'd, resented, lied, stole, grudg'd,
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me.
The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,

Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting,
Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,
Was call'd by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me approaching or passing,
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh against me as I sat,
Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet never told them a word,
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,
Play'd the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.

The lines, if you don't already know, are from Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, a poem about the passage from life to death. When I finished reading these lines I told my father that after I drive back to Boston I am going to call him every day at 8:00 a.m. You need to have things that you anticipate, that you expect to happen at a certain time. I took his lack of refusal to mean that he agreed.

The transience of the people and water and animals and industry that Walt Whitman sees signal his own death and assure him that beyond death he will know us and we will know him:

I too many and many a time cross'd the river of old,
Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air
      floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left
      the rest in strong shadow,
Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south,
Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
Look'd at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head in the sunlit water,
Look'd on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,
Look'd on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,
Look'd toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,
Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,
Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor,
The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,
The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine pennants,
The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilothouses,
The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels,
The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolic-some crests and glistening,
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the granite storehouses by the docks,
On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank'd
      on each side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated
      lighter,
On the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys
      burning high and glaringly into the night,
Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow
      light over the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of
      streets.

My father's depression broke. He started to eat more. Or rather, his doctor prescribed Ensure, he regained some strength, and his depression broke. He lived about two more years. I wish I could say he was graceful and dignified, but he wasn't really. He did the best that he knew how.

My friend Lisa and my friend Larry's mother, each with different challenges, were marvelously graceful. They knew what they were holding onto and wouldn't let it elude them. My father seized hold of it, rode it fiercely until it shook him free. He watched it drift away.

I finished my yoga practice, as always, with savasana, the corpse pose, letting go of effort, relaxation after exertion, the body's memory of itself. Lying still, feeling the pressure of my body against the floor, another wave of emotion:

Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg'd waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the
      men and women generations after me!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public assembly!
Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest name!
Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!
Play the old role, the role that is great or small according as one makes it!
Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be looking upon you;
Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with the hasting current;
Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air;
Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all
      downcast eyes have time to take it from you!
Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any one's head, in the sunlit water!
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sail'd schooners, sloops, lighters!
Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower'd at sunset!
Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at
      nightfall! cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses!

Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are,
You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul,
About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest aromas,
Thrive, cities-bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and sufficient rivers,
Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual,
Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting.

You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers,
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward,
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us,
We use you, and do not cast you aside-we plant you permanently within us,
We fathom you not- we love you- there is perfection in you also,
You furnish your parts toward eternity,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.