Inheritance

THE cars swerve by the barriers in the street,
Where Negroes with clanking drills pockmark the asphalt.
The surface gashed away, the black boys’ picks
Deepen the ditch; their shovels swing to bare
The rusty pipes, the clay-clung veins of the city.

Inside the red brick walls beyond the sidewalk
The newspaper presses shuffle and click away;
A crowd of street boys is waiting, ganged on the pavement.

The sun climbs higher, burning in the sky.
Sweat pops out on rusty shoulders and brows:
The undershirts of the Negroes cling with sweat;
The sun and the stinking work have warmed their hearts
Like cheap, raw whiskey. Laughter runs down the ditch;
The picks swing deeper, and swing in easy rhythm —
Swinging all as one, as to a chant.
This is the black boy’s heritage, the son
Of slaves: sweat-shouldered toil, the fire of the sun —
But much cheap laughter, the rhythm of a song.

The newsboys stream from the door, and fill the street
With shrill excitement, crying the noonday news:
The five-cent summary of a ghastly scene.
White men had whisked a black boy out of a jail,
And left him swinging, riddled, up in a tree —
Five towns away, before the sun was up.

The headlines cease to ring in the street; but the laughter
Is dead in the ditch. The black boys heave their picks
Silent and slow; the rhythm is broken; each stares
Down at the dirt, and thinks of his heritage.