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Cane

Chapter 8: COTTON SONG
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About This Book

The work assembles lyric sketches, poems, and short stories that move between the rural Black South and the urban North, rendering scenes of field labor, small-town intimacies, migration, and city struggle. Its language blends musical, imagistic poetry with prose vignettes, shifting tone from sensual celebration and folklore to psychological tension and spiritual searching. Structurally divided into three parts, it juxtaposes primitive southern evocations, a middle section of urban self-consciousness, and a return offering more meditative, symbolic pieces. Recurring themes include racial identity, desire, community, and the search for meaning through artistic and spiritual expression.

COTTON SONG

Come, brother, come. Lets lift it;
Come now, hewit! roll away!
Shackles fall upon the Judgment Day
But lets not wait for it.
God’s body’s got a soul,
Bodies like to roll the soul,
Cant blame God if we dont roll,
Come, brother, roll, roll!
Cotton bales are the fleecy way
Weary sinner’s bare feet trod,
Softly, softly to the throne of God,
“We aint agwine t wait until th Judgment Day!
Nassur; nassur,
Hump.
Eoho, eoho, roll away!
We aint agwine t wait until th Judgment Day!”
God’s body’s got a soul,
Bodies like to roll the soul,
Cant blame God if we dont roll,
Come, brother, roll, roll!