By — artsdesk artsdesk Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/poetry/weekly-poem-yusef-komunyakaa-reads-silas Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Weekly Poem: Yusef Komunyakaa reads ‘I Am Silas’ Poetry Apr 21, 2014 12:15 PM EDT Yusef Komunyakaa reads his poem “I Am Silas” at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. I Am Silas We worked the thorn bushes & front garden, hunted quail & jackrabbit deep into the woods, dipped fat hens into boiling pots to pluck the speckled feathers, picked mayhaw & blackberries beside a bog, shucked yellow corn into grain barrels, & horsed around in the snowy clover at sunset. He was a buckaroo at sixteen & me at seventeen when he signed up for the 44th Mississippi Cavalry, & we shadowed each other as if of the same wet mother. The boy owned my surname, but I hadn’t ever said sir or mister & he never called me manservant or slave before we teamed up with Johnny Rebs yelling across the border of Cicasaw county, before we fought our way to Belmont, Shiloh, Chickamauga, & Crooked Tree. My Bowie knife will never rust because the blade knows blood. Sometimes dreams come out of verse in Revelations & other times out of love songs half-whispered on a hilltop, or blues down from the Delta the whole lonely climb to West Point winding into pine & shrub oak where the sapsucker & God Bird live by infernal grace & fire. Once I dreamt in a canebrake faces of the First South Carolina & I could no longer stand guard over our sleeping shadows. The pale horse & the dark horse shook in their trace chains, & that was when a bullet caught up with Andrew Chandler & Yankee soldiers took us to Ohio To save his right leg I paid the camp doctor a gold piece sewn into his gray jacket, & we were sent to Atlanta in a lucky swap. Sometimes, if you plant a red pear tree beside an apple, the roots tangle underneath, & it’s hard to say if you’re eating apple of pear. When we came back to runagate crops going to seed & bedlam, I was ready to bargain for a corner of land. But history tried to pay me in infamy with Judas’s regalia & a few pieces of tarnished silver. Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem “I Am Silas” is published in “Lines in Long Array: A Civil War Commemoration: Poems and Photographs, Past and Present.” In recognition of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery commissioned 12 modern poets to reflect on our contemporary understanding of the war. We're not going anywhere. Stand up for truly independent, trusted news that you can count on! Donate now By — artsdesk artsdesk
Yusef Komunyakaa reads his poem “I Am Silas” at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. I Am Silas We worked the thorn bushes & front garden, hunted quail & jackrabbit deep into the woods, dipped fat hens into boiling pots to pluck the speckled feathers, picked mayhaw & blackberries beside a bog, shucked yellow corn into grain barrels, & horsed around in the snowy clover at sunset. He was a buckaroo at sixteen & me at seventeen when he signed up for the 44th Mississippi Cavalry, & we shadowed each other as if of the same wet mother. The boy owned my surname, but I hadn’t ever said sir or mister & he never called me manservant or slave before we teamed up with Johnny Rebs yelling across the border of Cicasaw county, before we fought our way to Belmont, Shiloh, Chickamauga, & Crooked Tree. My Bowie knife will never rust because the blade knows blood. Sometimes dreams come out of verse in Revelations & other times out of love songs half-whispered on a hilltop, or blues down from the Delta the whole lonely climb to West Point winding into pine & shrub oak where the sapsucker & God Bird live by infernal grace & fire. Once I dreamt in a canebrake faces of the First South Carolina & I could no longer stand guard over our sleeping shadows. The pale horse & the dark horse shook in their trace chains, & that was when a bullet caught up with Andrew Chandler & Yankee soldiers took us to Ohio To save his right leg I paid the camp doctor a gold piece sewn into his gray jacket, & we were sent to Atlanta in a lucky swap. Sometimes, if you plant a red pear tree beside an apple, the roots tangle underneath, & it’s hard to say if you’re eating apple of pear. When we came back to runagate crops going to seed & bedlam, I was ready to bargain for a corner of land. But history tried to pay me in infamy with Judas’s regalia & a few pieces of tarnished silver. Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem “I Am Silas” is published in “Lines in Long Array: A Civil War Commemoration: Poems and Photographs, Past and Present.” In recognition of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery commissioned 12 modern poets to reflect on our contemporary understanding of the war. We're not going anywhere. Stand up for truly independent, trusted news that you can count on! Donate now