He makes two or three efforts and finally calls softly Miriam! Miriam!
There is no answer. He calls louder Miriam!
MIRIAM
From offstage, left Well!
ROBERT
To himself I can’t. I can’t go to her. If I went to her now everything would get ugly. I can’t.
MIRIAM
From offstage, left Well! Are they gone?
ROBERT
Softly Yes, Miriam. They’re gone.
MIRIAM
Offstage What?
ROBERT
Louder They’re gone.
In a low voice to himself I can’t. I mustn’t.
MIRIAM
Offstage Well, you may undress out there. I’m undressed.
She laughs, a cold, half-hysterical laugh and ROBERT jumps to his feet When you’re ready, come on in. You have to be a man and a husband now. Don’t be afraid. You’ve got you a wife now.
Again she laughs, the same half-hysterical laugh
ROBERT
I can’t. I can’t. I won’t.
He sits and quickly takes off his shoes and holding them in his hand runs to the stair landing
WOMAN’S VOICE
From below Look, Mabel, at what a mess they’ve made.
ANOTHER WOMAN’S VOICE
Maud.
FIRST WOMAN’S VOICE
Well.
SECOND WOMAN’S VOICE
Say, let’s try the champagne. Come on. They’re all gone.
FIRST WOMAN’S VOICE
If Mrs. Grey thinks, just because I’m a servant, I am gonna stay up all night cleaning up this mess she’s got another think coming.
SECOND WOMAN’S VOICE
Come on, Maud. Here’s almost a full bottle. Let’s try it.
FIRST WOMAN’S VOICE
All right, I don’t care if I do. God, Mabel, don’t you wish you was rich?
There is the sound of woman’s laughter from below
WOMAN’S VOICE
Gee! This is funny stuff. It tickles your nose.
ROBERT FOREST runs back into the room. He seems half distracted. He sits again in the chair, but immediately jumps up nervously. He runs to the center of the stage. He puts down the shoes. He takes off his coat and running over lays it on the bed. He sits again. Again he jumps up
ROBERT
She won’t understand. How can she understand?
MIRIAM
From offstage Well, are you coming?
Again there is the same kind of cold laughter and ROBERT FOREST runs nervously about the room
ROBERT
I won’t. I won’t. I don’t care if she never understands. I won’t. I can’t.
He picks up the shoes and puts them down again, runs over to the bed and picks up his coat but puts it down again. He crosses to the window and, pulling it up, crawls out. There is a sound as though some heavy object had fallen through bushes
WOMAN’S VOICE
From below What was that?
ANOTHER WOMAN’S VOICE
I’ll bet it’s some one up to something. It’s that drunken Jed Smith.
ANOTHER WOMAN’S VOICE
I think they ought to be let alone.
ANOTHER WOMAN’S VOICE
Let’s go see.
MIRIAM opens the door, left, and comes into the room. She is in her nightgown. She looks hurriedly about the room
MIRIAM
Gone! He’s gone!
She runs to the open window and then comes back. She sees the shoes on the floor in the center of stage. She stands looking down at them. She laughs, but now her laughter is joyous. Again she runs and drops to her knees by the bed. She puts her face in her hands and her shoulders shake. She is a little hysterical. She jumps up and runs again to the window and then to the shoes. She looks down at the shoes and laughs again He couldn’t. After all that vulgarity down there, he couldn’t. He isn’t as they are. He is all right. I’ll get him back. I’ll have a real marriage.
She runs to the stairs and down, calling joyously as she runs, the voice growing fainter as she runs through the house calling. There is no response to her calls Mother! Mother! It’s all right. Mother! It’s all right.
CURTAIN
The Poetry Collections
A colorized photo of Loop Street, Chicago, 1900. Anderson settled in Chicago after his mother’s death in 1895 and maintained close ties with the city for most of his life. In recognition of this, Anderson was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame in 2012.
Mid-American Chants
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
THE CORNFIELDS
CHICAGO
SONG OF INDUSTRIAL AMERICA
SONG OF CEDRIC THE SILENT
SONG OF THE BREAK OF DAY
SONG OF THE BEGINNING OF COURAGE
REVOLT
A LULLABY
SONG OF THEODORE
MANHATTAN
SPRING SONG
INDUSTRIALISM
SALVO
THE PLANTING
SONG OF THE MIDDLE WORLD
THE STRANGER
SONG OF THE LOVE OF WOMEN
SONG OF STEPHEN THE WESTERNER
SONG TO THE LOST ONES
FORGOTTON SONG
AMERICAN SPRING SONG
THE BEAM
SONG TO NEW SONG
SONG FOR DARK NIGHTS
THE LOVER
NIGHT WHISPERS
SONG TO THE SAP
RHYTHMS
UNBORN
NIGHT.
A VISIT
CHANT TO DAWN IN A FACTORY TOWN
SONG OF THE MATING TIME
SONG FOR LONELY ROADS
SONG LONG AFTER
SONG OF THE SOUL OF CHICAGO
SONG OF THE DRUNKEN BUSINESS MAN
SONG TO THE LAUGH
HOSANNA
WAR
MID-AMERICAN PRAYER
WE ENTER IN
DIRGE OF WAR
LITTLE SONG TO A WESTERN STATESMAN
SONG OF THE BUG
ASSURANCE
REMINISCENT SONG
EVENING SONG
SONG OF THE SINGER
TO
MARION MARGARET ANDERSON
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
FOREWORD
— I do not believe that we people of mid-western America, immersed as we are in affairs, hurried and harried through life by the terrible engine — industrialism — have come to the time of song. To me it seems that song belongs with and has its birth in the memory of older things than we know. In the beaten paths of life, when many generations of men have walked the streets of a city or wandered at night in the hills of an old land, the singer arises.
— The singer is neither young nor old but within him always there is something that is very old. The flavor of many lives lived and of many gone weary to the end of life creeps into his voice. Words run out beyond the power of words. There is unworldly beauty in the song of him who sings out of the souls of peoples of old times and places but that beauty does not yet belong to us.
— In Middle America men are awakening. Like awkward and untrained boys we begin to turn toward maturity and with our awakening we hunger for song. But in our towns and fields there are few memory haunted places. Here we stand in roaring city streets, on steaming coal heaps, in the shadow of factories from which come only the grinding roar of machines. We do not sing but mutter in the darkness. Our lips are cracked with dust and with the heat of furnaces. We but mutter and feel our way toward the promise of song.
— For this book of chants I ask only that it be allowed to stand stark against the background of my own place and generation. Honest Americans will not demand beauty that is not yet native to our cities and fields. In secret a million men and women are trying, as I have tried here, to express the hunger within and I have dared to put these chants forth only because I hope and believe they may find an answering and clearer call in the hearts of other Mid- Americans.
&nb
sp; SHERWOOD ANDERSON.
Chicago, February, 1918.
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 com rustles.
All of the people of my time were bound with chains. They
had forgotten the long fields and the standing com.
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
com, 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 com.
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 INDUSTRIAL AMERICA
They tell themselves so many little lies, my beloved. Now
wait, little one — we can’t sing. We are standing in a
crowd, by a bridge, in the West. Hear the voices —
turn around — let’s go home — I am tired. They tell
themselves so many little lies.
You remember in the night we arose. We were young.
There was smoke in the passage and you laughed. Was
it good — that black smoke? Look away to the streams
and the lake. We’re alive. See my hand — how it
trembles on the rail.
Here is song, here in America, here now, in our time. Now
wait — I’ll go to the train. I’ll not swing off into tunes.
I’m all right — I just want to talk.
You watch my hand on the rail of this bridge. I press
down. The blood goes down — there. That steadies me
— it makes me all right.
Now here’s how it’s going to come — the song, I mean. I’ve
watched things, men and faces — I know.
First there are the broken things — myself and the others.
I don’t mind that — I’m gone — shot to pieces. I’m part
of the scheme — I’m the broken end of a song myself.
We are all that, here in the West, here in Chicago.
Tongues clatter against teeth. There’s nothing but shrill
screams and a rattle. That had to be — it’s a part of the
scheme.
Souls, dry souls, rattle around.
Winter of song. Winter of song.
Now, faint little voices do lift up. They are swept away
in the void — that’s true enough. It had to be so from
the very first. Pshaw — I’m steady enough — let me alone.
Keokuk, Tennessee, Michigan, Chicago, Kalamazoo —
don’t the names in this country make you fairly drunk?
We’ll stand by this brown stream for hours. I’ll not be
swept away. Watch my hand — how steady it is. To
catch this song and sing it would do much — make much
clear.
Come close to me warm little thing. It is night — I am
cold. When I was a boy in my village here in the West,
I always knew all the old men. How sweet they were
— quite Biblical too — makers of wagons and harness and
plows — sailors and soldiers and pioneers. We got Walt
and Abraham out of that lot.
Then a change came.
Drifting along. Drifting along.
Winter of song. Winter of song.
You know my city — Chicago triumphant — factories and
marts and the roar of machines — horrible, terrible, ugly
and brutal.
It crushed things down and down. Nobody wanted to hurt.
They didn’t want to hurt me or you. They were caught
themselves. I know the old men here — millionaires. I’ve
always known old men all my life. I’m old myself. You
would never guess how old I am.
Can a singer arise and sing in this smoke and grime? Can
he keep his throat clear? Can his courage survive?
I’ll tell you what it is — now you be still. To Hell with
you. I’m an old empty barrel floating in the stream —
that’s what I am. You stand away. I’ve come to life.
My arms lift up — I begin to swim.
Hell and damnation — turn me loose. The floods come on.
That isn’t the roar of the trains at all. It’s the flood —
the terrible, horrible flood turned loose.
Winter of song. Winter of song.
Carried along. Carried along.
Now in the midst of the broken waters of my civilization
rhythm begins. Clear above the flood I raise my
ringing
voice. In the disorder and darkness of the night, in the
wind and the washing waves, I shout to my brothers —
lost in the flood.
Little faint beginnings of things — old things dead — sweet
old things — a life lived in Chicago — in the West — in the
whirl of industrial America.
God knows you might have become something else — just
like me. You might have made soft little tunes — written
cynical little ditties, eh? Why the devil didn’t you make
some money and own an automobile?
Do you believe — now listen — I do. Say, you — now listen —
do you believe the hand of God reached down to me in
the flood? I do. ’Twas like a streak of fire along my
back. That’s a lie, of course. The face of God looked
down at me, over the rim of the world.
Don’t you see we are all a part of something, here in the
West? We’re trying to break through. I’m a song myself, the broken end of a song myself.
We have to sing, you see, here in the darkness. All men
have to sing — poor broken things. We have to sing here
in the darkness in the roaring flood. We have to find
each other. Have you courage to-night for a song? Lift
your voices. Come.
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
Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson Page 317