Yusef Komunyakaa - The Whistle lyrics

1 The seven o'clock whistle Made the morning air fulvous With a metallic syncopation A key to a door in the sky---opening & closing flesh. The melody Men & women built lives around Sonorous as the queen bee's fat Hum drawing workers from flowers Back to the colonized heart A titanous puff of steam rose From the dragon trapped below Iron, bricks, & wood The whole black machine Shuddered: blue jays & redbirds Wove light through leaves & something dead under the foundation Brought worms to life Men capped their thermoses Switched off Loretta Lynn & slid from trucks & cars The rip saws throttled & swung out over logs On conveyer belts Daddy lifted the tongs To his right shoulder . . . a winch Uncoiled the steel cable From its oily scrotum; He waved to the winchman & iron teeth bit into the pine Yellow forklifts darted With lumber to boxcars Marked for distant cities At noon, Daddy would walk Across the field of goldenrod & mustard weeds, the pollen Bright & sullen on his overalls He'd eat on our screened-in Back porch---red beans & rice With hamhocks & cornbread Lemonade & peach Jello The one o'clock bleat Burned sweat & salt into afternoon & the wheels within wheels Unlocked again, pulling rough boards Into the plane's pneumatic grip Wild geese moved like a wedge Between sky & sagebrush As Daddy pulled the cable To the edge of the millpond & sleepwalked cypress logs The day turned on its axle & pyramids of russet sawdust Formed under corrugated Blowpipes fifty feet high The five o'clock whistle Bellowed like a bull, controlling Clocks on kitchen walls; Women dabbed loud perfume Behind their ears & set tables Covered with flowered oilcloth 2 When my father was kicked by the foreman He booted him back & his dreams slouched into an aftershock Of dark women whispering To each other. Like petals of a black rose In one of Busby Berkeley's Oscillating dances in a broken room. Shadows Runagates & Marys The steel-gray evening was a canvas Zigzagged with questions Curling up from smokestacks, as dusky birds Brushed blues into a montage Traced back to L'Amistad & the psychosis Behind Birth of a Nation With eyes against gla** & ears to diaphanous doors I heard a cornered prayer Car lights rubbed against our windows Ravenous as snow wolves A brick fell into the livingroom like a black body & a riot of drunk curses Left the gladioli & zinnias Maimed. Double dares Took root in night soil The whistle boiled Gutbucket underneath silence & burned with wrath But by then Daddy was with Uncle James Outside The Crossroad Their calloused fingers caressing the .38 On the seat of the pickup; Maybe it was the pine-scented moonglow That made him look so young & faceless, wearing his mother's powder blue Sunday dress & veiled hat