Sun-Up, and Other Poems — Themes and Context

This thought makes me very sad.

Jude has eyes like tobacco with yellow specks on it and his hair is red as a red orange. Jude and I have made a garden in the field that no one knows about. We creep in and out through a little place where the barbed wire is down. We lie in the long grass and crush dandelions between our two cheeks till the milk comes out on our faces. We hold each other tight and the wind tip-toes all over us and pelts us with thistle-down.

Jude isn't afraid of shadows-- not even of the ones that have eyes in them. And he can look in the face of the sun without blinking at all. Hush! don't say sun so loud. The sun gets angry when you stare at him. If you peek in his glory-windows he spreads into a great white flame like God out of his Burning Bush... till you put your hands up on your face and tremble like a drop of rain upon a flower that some one throws into the fire... and then the sun makes himself small, the sun swings down out of the sky-- littler'n a star, little as a spark little as a fierce red spider on a burning thread... and then the light goes out... shivers into blackened bits.... You hold on to a wall that whirls around and the gate is a black hole. You grope your way in like a toad that's blinded by a stone... and mama puts on cold wet rags that get hot soon.... Hush! don't let's talk about the sun.

When you pass by the ditch where Janie is You run very fast and look at the other side. Jude says Janie did love me only she couldn't forgive me, and that you can love people very much and never, never, never forgive them.... so we poked a stick in the bottle-green water. But only weeds came up and an old top with the paint washed off.

Jude and I wave to the new moon curled right up like one gold hair on the bald-head sandhill. Mama peeps out the window and smiles. She thinks I am playing with myself... Run, Jude, run with the wind-- but hold my hand tight or the wind, looking for some one to play with, will take me away from you! Wind with no one to play with cooees the orange-trees-- stay-at-home orange trees, have to nurse oranges, greeny-gold. Wind shouts to the grass-- run-away-grass tugs at its roots, but the earth holds tight and the grass falls down and wind boos over it. Wind whistles the bees-- bees too busy with taking home stuff out of flowers won't look back-- bees always going somewhere. Only Jude and I-- heads over shoulders watching all roads at one time-- run with the wind, going to nowhere.

Jude and I were weeding our garden when we heard his whip-- must have been a new whip to cut off dandelion-heads at one swing.... He was the kind of boy you knew when you had Celia.... with nice clothes on and curls crawling about his collar like little golden slugs, and his man was leading his horse. I wish I hadn't run to meet him.... If you hadn't run to meet him he mightn't have trod on your garden and said: Get out of my field you dirty little beggar... he mightn't have struck you with his whip.... How the daisies stared.... I hate daisies-- stupid white faces-- skinny necks craning over the grass! I said It is not your field, and he struck me again. But he didn't make me run. His hand smelled of sweet soap... he couldn't shake me off, but his man did.... Funny--how the sky fell down and turned over and over like a blue carpet rolling you up, and the grass caught at your face-- it couldn't have been spiteful-- it must have been saving itself. Hot road... silly wind playing with your hair.... The road smelled of horses. I only got up when I heard a dray.

Mama has sung ba ba black sheep, and put a chair with a cloth on it between me and the light. But the clock keeps saying: Dirty little beggar, dirty little beggar.... Some day I will get that boy. I will pull off his arms and legs and put him in a box and hide the box under the bed.... I wonder will he buzz when I take him out to look at his body that will have no arms to whip me?