Creole Sketches/Des Perches
DES PERCHES[1]
Daily he goeth out beyond the limits of the city into lonesome and swampy places where copperheads and rattlesnakes abound.
And there he cutteth him clothes-poles, wherewith he marcheth through the city in the burning glare of the sun; singing a refrain simple in words but weird in music.
A long and lamentable sobbing cry, as of one in exceeding great pain and anguish.
So sorrowful in sooth that the sorrow of the city drowneth the sound and sense of the words, — the words chanted in ancient Creole patois —
And we, listening to the cry, gave ourselves up to solemn meditation;
Dreaming of the cries of anguish that arise when a clothes-line, heavily burdened with its snowy freight, falleth upon the mud;
And the poor little woman sitteth down and crieth till her eyes are red, ere she findeth courage to commence all over again, and mend the clothes-line.
It is to avoid these things that men should buy clothes-poles.
Des perches!
And hearing the ancient negro once more lifting up his voice, we also remembered
That often in the dead waste and middle of the night, while meandering about the black backyard,
We were suddenly and violently smitten on the nostrils by the treacherous clothes-pole, hidden between lines of white sheets and shirts that waved their empty arms like spectres.
Also, we remembered how the wet linen fell upon our sacred person; and how we tried to lift up the clothes-pole again but could not; —
For the cunning of the washerwoman was not given to us.
But notwithstanding these things we do bless the clothes-poles, and him that sells them, remembering the service they do to the indispensable washerwoman.
Des perches! — des perches!
- ↑ Item, August 30, 1880.