East of Corsicana: Circa 1921    by Steven M. Smith

        from an old photograph

Small faces leathered by the sun foretell the

Final chapter yet to be written as if it were an

Alliteration of disdain, hope does not abide here.

Bare feet shuffling, echo in the memories that

Still whisper their names along paths they did

Not take toward the cellar door never opened.

Round the pens, through the plank gate, into

A harsher world, their only world, that points

To one end, hope does not abide here.

There they stood, undignified, invisible,

Standing, without the foreknowledge, over

The dead soil in the August heat--arrested movement.

The unheard music hidden in the cotton fields

Crosses unseen between the furrows to the turnrow

Full of children who cannot bear very much reality.

Hidden in a sea of green foliage, the bolls

Contain all emotion, the emotion containing

The children, hope does not abide here.

The dust is all the hope this land will leave. Dust in the air

suspended, over the graves where their agrarian lives ended.