This is the poem on HENRY MCALLAN, the stoic older brother from MUDBOUND. It's a personal interpretation that goes beyond the pages of the novel and images from the acclaimed film. Empathy is the sustained note in his case too.
**
Curls of grey hair, split with splintered forefingers
and a muddy paste to drench this scalp of fourscore years.
Country fairs far from sight
and noontime babbles bubbling in hours of supreme boredom.
The sweat of my brow leads to this place,
a salted tributary reaching up to my ankles and keeping me tongue- tied,
to finally taste the rain
and life's overflowing storehouse I left rusted and corrugated.
Disbelief, that is a feeling
for the man I have become,
fed baleful traditions,
snake bites and frosty tempers
from a father too cruel for love's sweet amends.
***
A labouring mile
and a stormy cry,
these two I had left unlatched
and more often than not,
the earth stood still to wait for my ease of hand and I gave my recompense,
bathing in the middle of these fields,
taking the eyes of an open sky to be God's very own country.
Learning still to have and to hold,
ancestral properties with hateful pride,
years of numb spirits standing atop buried bodies,
with flying birds of ancestors past cracking heels and tasting salt of the earth.
**
This, here, is my share.
Tell you brother,
brother in arms,
in perpetual conflict with our own natures.
Here lies the legacy of the one soul-sapped,
digging roots and placing dead roses at the bottom of this lonely tree.
*****
YOU ARE READING
SALT OF THE EARTH: POEMS BASED ON MUDBOUND.
PoetryThis compendium is a tribute in poetic form to Hillary Jordan's novel and its heart touching cinematic interpretation by director Dee Rees. It touches upon the constructs of each individual character and on timeless permutations of humanity ( and v...
