Once on a Night in the Delta

Books by Etheridge Knight

Poems from Prison / Black Voices from Prison / Belly Song and Other Poems

Born of a Woman / Essential Etheridge Knight

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Once on a Night in the Delta

A Report from Hell

for Sterling Brown

By Etheridge Knight

Gravel rattles against the fenders of the van.

The River flashes in the distance.

The wind is thick with the scent of honeysuckle

The road from Greenville curves like the sickle

Of the new moon, now hanging over east Texas.

Moun' Bayou sleeps on a straight street

The poor lives on both sides of the tracks

In this town peopled by Blacks.

Tho the bloods/no/pack pistols

And rap on two way radios,

And the homes of a few are spacious and new

With sunken patios;

Tho the dice are/shot/thru a leather horn and

The whiskey burns my belly in the early morning.

We still shuffle in lines, like coffles of slaves

Stamps for food—the welfare rolls and the voting polls

We frown. Our eyes are dark caves

Of mourning. —So I'd like to report to you, Sir Brown—

From away/down/here—

Mississippi is still hell, Sir Brown—

For me and Slim Greer

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posted 2 December 2005

Etheridge Knight, born in Corinth, Mississippi, perhaps will be remembered for his excellence in blending oral and poetic traditions as he tried to create works that confronted personal and social dimensions with relentless honesty. Some critics praised him on his ability to render the genre of the toast as high art. He began writing poetry in 1963 while he was incarcerated at Indiana prison. His books include Poems from Prison, Black Voices from Prison, Belly Song and Other Poems, Born of a Woman, and the Essential Etheridge Knight. Knight received NEA grants in 1972 and 1980 and won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974. His work is included in such anthologies as Dices and Black Bones, Norton Anthology of American Poets, New Black Voices, and Black Poets. Etheridge died in 1991.

Source: Black Southern Voices, Edited by John Oliver Killens and Jerry W. Ward, Jr.

Read also Bio at Poets.org