Forty Acres, a poem by Derek Walcott
Out of the turmoil emerges one emblem, an engraving� a young Negro at dawn in straw hat and overalls, an emblem of impossible prophecy: a crowd dividing like the furrow which a mule has plowed, parting for their president; a field of snow-flecked cotton forty acres wide, of crows with predictable omens that the young plowman ignores for his unforgotten cotton-haired ancestors, while lined on one branch are a tense court of bespectacled owls and, on the field�s receding rim is a gesticulating scarecrow stamping with rage at him while the small plow continues on this lined page beyond the moaning ground, the lynching tree, the tornado�s black vengeance, and the young plowman feels the change in his veins, heart, muscles, tendons, till the field lies open like a flag as dawn�s sure light streaks the field and furrows wait for the sower. I've been told many times, directly and indirectly, notably by Geoffrey and Rustum , both of whom I admire, that if I read any one thing, then I must...