No Case Of Libel By A Negro

Cross Creek Belongs To The Wind And The Rain, To The Sun And The Seasons, To The Cosmic Secrecy Of Seed, And Beyond All, To Time.

For Myself, The Creek Satisfies A Thing That Had Gone Hungry And Unfed Since Childhood Days. I Am Often Lonely. Who Is Not? But I Should Be Lonelier In The Heart Of A City.

Men Had Reached Into The Scrub And Along Its Boundaries, Had Snatched What They Could Get And Had Gone Away, Uneasy In That Vast Indifferent Peace; For A Man Was Nothing, Crawling Ant-like Among The Myrtle Bushes Under The Pines. Now They Were Gone, It Was As Though They Had Never Been. The Silence Of The Scrub Was Primordial. The Wood-thrush Crying Across It Might Have Been The First Bird In The World-or The Last.

No Case Of Libel By A Negro Against A White Would Even Reach A Southern Court.

But To Make The Intangible Tangible, To Pick The Emotion Out Of The Air And Make It True For Others, Is Both The Blessing And The Curse Of The Writer, For The Thing Between Book Covers Is Never As Beautiful As The Thing He Imagined.