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 ploughman ignores for his unforgotten
cotton-haired ancestors, while line on one branch,
is a tense court of bespeckled owls and, on the field's
receding rim
a gesticulating scarecrow stamping with rage at him.
The small plow continues on this lined page
beyond the moaning ground, the lynching tree, the tornado's
black vengeance,
and the young ploughman feels the change in his veins,
heart, muscles, tendons,
til the land lies open like a flag as dawn's sure
light streaks the field and furrows wait for the sower.
- by Derek Walcott
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