On the Gum Swamp

 Diddu-Wah-Diddy

By john clare

All along the long Gum Swamp

Hear the rosin drip in the clay pots

The seeping from Osceola's pine stands 

Slashes from the axe of the bent black men

In the stiffened breeches

Shirtless and oozing sweat with every gash 

Singing in unison through the palmetto

"Boss man's ridin' by

Boss man's ridin' by

Look out, boy, look out!"

Looking past Taylor across the bank of the St Mary's

Into the shade of the mythical

Diddu-Wah-Diddy

Pllace of no work or worry

For man or beast

The way there so crooked

The mule pullin' the fodder wagon could eat from it

 Place everyone would live

If only the road weren't so crooked and the route known

Today the rut road is black topped and easy is the straight way

Uncle Bud but a distant memory of when he left the state of old Virginia in the winter time;

"Where you guin nigger"?,they said.

"I'se guin to Flardi,

 I'se guin to Flardi,

 guin to Flardi to work

In de turpentine.

Guin to where all de curb stones is chairs

Guin to where all de food is already cooked

Baked chickens and sweet potato pies 

with convenient knives and forks driftin' along cryin',

"Eat me! Eat me!"

Where the more you ate

The more remained."

But mostly the old turpentine men wound up settlin' for

Beluthahatchee

A land of forgetfulness

Where all was forgotten and forgiven

Unhitchin' the mule by the neat little shanty

In the sand swept yard with

Mammy and the chicken's scratchin' a livin'

This side of the crooked and 

black St Mary's River.