Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darknessand the darkness thicketed with shapes of terrorand the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuingand the night cold and the night long and the riverto cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoningand blackness ahead and when shall I reach that somewheremorning and keep on going and never turn back and keep on going Runagate Runagate Runagate Many thousands rise and gomany thousands crossing over O mythic North O star-shaped yonder Bible
Some go weeping and some rejoicingsome in coffins and some in carriagessome in silks and some in shackles Rise and go or fare you
No more auction block for meno more driver's lash for me If you see my Pompey, 30 yrs of age, new breeches, plain stockings, negro shoes; if you see my Anna, likely young mulatto branded E on the right cheek,
R on the left, catch them if you can and notify subscriber. Catch them if you can, but it won't be easy. They'll dart underground when you try to catch them, plunge into quicksand, whirlpools, mazes, torn into scorpions when you try to catch them.
And before I'll be a slaveI'll be buried in my grave North star and bonanza gold I'm bound for the freedom, freedom-bound and oh Susyanna don't you cry for me Runagate
II.
Rises from their anguish and their power, Harriet Tubman, woman of earth, whipscarred, a summoning, a shining Mean to be free And this was the way of it, brethren brethren, way we journeyed from Can't to Can. Moon so bright and no place to hide, the cry up and the patterollers riding, hound dogs belling in bladed air. And fear starts a-murbling,
Never make it, we'll never make it.
Hush that now, and she's turned upon us, levelled pistol glinting in the moonlight: Dead folks can't jaybird-talk, she says; you keep on going now or die, she says.
Wanted Harriet Tubman alias The Generalalias Moses Stealer of Slaves In league with Garrison Alcott
Garrett Douglass Thoreau John
Armed and known to be
Wanted Reward Dead or Alive Tell me,
Ezekiel, oh tell me do you see nailed Jehovah coming to deliver me?
Hoot-owl calling in the ghosted air,five times calling to the hants in the air.
Shadow of a face in the scary leaves,shadow of a voice in the talking leaves: Come ride-a my train Oh that train, ghost-story train through swamp and savanna movering movering, over trestles of dew, through caves of the wish, Midnight Special on a sabre track movering movering, first stop Mercy and the last Hallelujah. Come ride-a my train Mean mean mean to be free.
The word runagate sounds like runaway. It connotes word’s that import tales of slavery. It also it derives from the word renegade, (16th century) as was Harriet Tubman, and many other slaves that refused to be bound.
This poem is also known as Runagate,
Runagate
