Cane

“Evening Song,” another poem, has three stanzas of four lines each (the first line of the final stanza is long and technically finishes on another line). The speaker is with Cloine, the woman the speaker loves. In the first stanza, Cloine is becoming sleepy, which the speaker recognizes by her loosely parted lips. Soon, Cloine is asleep, and the speaker also expects to join her in slumber. Cloine lies curled up against the speaker. 

Set in a town in Georgia, “Esther” is divided into three parts, with subsections stating Esther’s age. The first subsection in part 1 is titled “Nine.” Esther is a very fair-skinned little girl with curly hair and high cheekbones. Her face is “prematurely serious,” the only thing keeping her from being more obviously “pretty.” One day when she is walking home, she passes by a dark-skinned man named King Barlo. He falls to his knees at the Spittoon and looks up to the sky in a religious trance. People are familiar with this and gather around to listen to him speak. They regard him as a prophet. He is silent and still for a while; then, he begins by explaining that Jesus has been “awhisperin strange words deep down […] in my ears” (28). As he speaks, the listeners respond affirmatively and holler. He describes a vision that he saw of a large Black man rising with his head in the clouds. In this vision, “little white-ant biddies” chain the man’s feet and take him as a slave across the sea. As Barlo pauses, his audience—Black and white alike—is emotionally moved. Disapproving preachers try to figure out how to get rid of him. Barlo rises to his feet as the sun sets and calls the people to turn to the Lord. For years to come, people recall hearing a thunderous voice then, and angels and demons “parad[ing] up and down the streets all night” (29). Barlo leaves town riding a bull but leaves a lasting impression on the town and Esther.

Part 2 begins with the subsection “Sixteen.” Esther daydreams that a nearby shop catches fire and the fire department must go and rescue a baby, which Esther claims as her own. She begins a new daydream where there is a fire again, but this time loiterers on the corner put it out by chewing and squirting tobacco juice onto it. Women lift their skirts and flee; Esther is left to take the baby. The baby is “ugly as sin” (30), but she holds the baby close and loves it.

In subsection “Twenty-two,” Esther now works at her father’s grocery store. Her father is the wealthiest Black man in town. Esther wonders why men are not interested in her. She recalls Barlo, romanticizing him and deciding she will tell him she loves him whenever he returns. Five years go by; her hair thins, and her face pales to gray. Part 3 begins with the subsection “Esther is twenty-seven.” One day while she is working in the store, King Barlo returns to town in a new car. He is wealthy now from cotton during “the war” (likely World War I). Esther wishes she were more “sharp” and “sporty” to attract Barlo. Flustered by the thought of the “loose women” and “easy-going men” who will possess him if she doesn’t, Esther closes the store and rushes home. At midnight, she sneaks out to Nat Bowle’s place, where Barlo is staying. As she ascends the stairs toward the voices of lounging people, the thick tobacco smoke makes her dizzy, and she passes out. She awakes to Barlo asking her why she has come. She says she has come for him, but he does not understand at first. Others in the room are surprised that this upper-class fair girl has come, and they laugh at her being so forward. Barlo is drunk, and when he grins at Esther, she finds him ugly. Now repulsed by Barlo, Esther turns around and leaves.

“Conversion” is a short, single-stanza poem in free verse with eight lines. It describes an “African Guardian of Souls” eating and drinking rum, met with new words from a “white-faced sardonic god.” The Guardian’s response is to grin and shout “hosanna.” 

“Portrait in Georgia” is a seven-line, single-stanza poem in free verse. This poem offers a series of metaphors for the parts of an unnamed woman. Her hair, eyes, lips, breath, and body are likened to braided chestnut, a bundle of sticks, old scars, the scent of cane, and white ash, respectively.

“Blood-Burning Moon” is divided into three parts. The story begins at dusk with a rising full moon in an African American factory town (“a location of antebellum cotton mills”) (172). Louisa is singing as she walks back home to the town from her domestic work in a white family’s home. Bob Stone, the younger son of that white family, is in love with Louisa. Tom “Big Boy” Burwell, a Black field worker from Louisa’s town, also loves her. Louisa likes them both; she is planning to meet Bob in the canebrake later that day, and she also expects Tom to propose to her very soon.

Part 2 begins with a scene of sugar cane being processed in the factory town. As the men work and rest, they talk about women. Tom is there, and when someone mentions that Louisa is with Bob Stone, he gets defensive and starts a fight. Fed up, he leaves. He later finds Louisa and tries, with difficulty, to express his love for her. He confronts her about a relationship with Tom, and she denies it; he is satisfied, saying he would cut Tom if the rumors were true, as he had already cut the Black man who made the accusation. As they sit together, the whole town sings about a “blood-burning moon” and “sinner” (42).

Part 3 begins with Bob Stone at home pondering his secret sexual relationship with Louisa. He sees this relationship as in keeping with white domination. He doesn’t quite understand Black people, refers to them using the n-word, and his love for Louisa is tempered by her Blackness. He has heard rumors about Louisa and Tom, and when he overhears some men talking about Tom’s threat to cut Bob, he goes to find Tom in a jealous rage. He finds Tom and Louisa sitting together, and the two men fight. Tom cuts Bob’s throat, and Bob staggers back toward his town, where he says it was Tom who cut him. Meanwhile, the Black people know trouble is coming, and all go inside, except for Louisa and Tom. A lynch mob of white men drive into factory town and take him to the factory, where they burn him alive. Meanwhile, Louisa sits distraught on her front steps. She considers the full moon an omen, and sings to it the same song the townsfolk sang earlier.