Variations on a Black Cinema Treasure: Broken Earth
Broken Earth
Year of Release: 1939
Running Time: 11 minutes
Cast: Clarence Muse and unidentified boy
I am the sick boy in the shack when the camera opens
On the sunrise and wispy silhouettes of the plow
And the fool mule and my father working a row down
The middle of a rock field with a small shack in one corner
And a shade tree in the other where a crew of barefoot
Old black men stoop and sing “All God’s Chillun Wear Shoes”
And call out Hey and Hi and the name of my father
Who goes on plowing into sundown, into the dark hour
When the mule will grunt no farther and the red eyes
Of the black men’s cigarettes blaze and flicker in one corner
Of the field as I quiver in a wet skin in the hot small light
Of the lantern blazing and flickering in the shack.
I am a sick boy. I am as still as a kettle of water. I am waiting
To be rearranged by the hand of God, which is not the hand
Of God, but the strip of cloth pressed against my brow
By my father who has no medicine but prayer.
I don’t know what I did to get here mumbling
“Pappy” and calling out to the ghost of my mother
As a choir sings “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” somewhere.
I don’t know who it is telling me to open my eyes.
Copyright Credit: "Variation on a Black Cinema Treasure: Broken Earth" from WIND IN A BOX by Terrance Hayes, copyright © 2006 by Terrance Hayes. Used by permission of Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.