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Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, (1879-1931)

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Excerpt from "The Congo"

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
[A deep rolling bass.]
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, boom,
Then I had religion, then I had a vision.
I could not turn from their revel in derision.
Then I saw the Congo, creeping through the black, [More deliberate. Solemnly chanted.]
Cutting through the jungle with a golden track.
Then along that riverbank
A thousand miles
Tattooed cannibals danced in files;
Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song
And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong. [A rapidly piling climax of speed and racket.]
And "Blood" screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors;
"Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle,
Harry the uplands,
Steal all the cattle,
Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle,
Bing!
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, "boom!"
A roaring, epic, rag-time tune [With a philosophic pause.]
From the mouth of the Congo
To the Mountains of the Moon.
Death is an Elephant,
Torch-eyed and horrible,
Foam-flanked and terrible.
Boom, steal the pygmies,
Boom, kill the Arabs,
Boom, kill the white men
Hoo, Hoo, Hoo. [Like the wind in the chimney.]
Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost
Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.
Listen to the creepy proclamation,
Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation,
Blown past the white-ants' hill of clay,
Blown past the marsh where the butterflies play:-
"Be careful what you do,
Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo, [All the sounds very golden. Heavy accents very heavy
And all of the other Light accents very light. Last line whispered.]
Gods of the Congo,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.