What was he doing the great god Pan?
Do you really want to know?
Down by the River Oyan,
Where the Nigerian reeds grow,
provoking greed and creating a riot,
between the Yoruba, Dahomey, and Igbo
instigating wars and spreading blight.
He separated the reed from the rush, the Great God Pan
to divide and conquer the brush,
and took the reeds to a faraway land,
to labor like dogs to the mush,
from sun up to sun wan, fueling his greed,
He beat the blues from the reeds,
High on the deck of his ship, the Great God Pan
crowded the reed in the hull,
filled with disease, infection, and mayhem
kept them in line with a gun and a whip,
reducing their complaints to null,
and begrudging their Gods be damned.
He conquered their spirits in full.
He laughed at their pain, did the great God Pan
and drew their blood with the lash,
but music their groans became,
even on the hole of the asp.
like instruments, these reeds rang,
like the flute, the horn, and the sax,
though they inhaled pain,
They blew out jazz.
Negro spirituals in the fields of cane.
He stole them away from the River's edge,
to never again see their home,
but like the poet said,
in the Browning poem,
"He hacked and hewed as a great god can,
with his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
til there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
to prove it fresh from the river."
A taker, not a giver, was the great God Pan,
so destined to live his manifest plan,
more a beast and less of a man,
he deforested the forest from the rain,
and caused the climate to change,
He never replenished the seed,
He drew the pith from the heart of a man,
and has never amended the deed.
These reeds grow now on a different plain, despite the Great God Pan,
bruised but unbroken, but then,
still a metaphor of a man,
The loss of roots is the cost of pain,
and of ancestors whose lives not lived in vain,
For the reed which grows nevermore again,
As a reed with the reeds of the River Oyan.
By Victori Bass ©
Browning's Poem
| Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 1806–1861 |
| 687. A Musical Instrument |
| WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan, | |
| Down in the reeds by the river? | |
| Spreading ruin and scattering ban, | |
| Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, | |
| And breaking the golden lilies afloat | 5 |
| With the dragon-fly on the river. | |
| He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, | |
| From the deep cool bed of the river; | |
| The limpid water turbidly ran, | |
| And the broken lilies a-dying lay, | 10 |
| And the dragon-fly had fled away, | |
| Ere he brought it out of the river. | |
| High on the shore sat the great god Pan, | |
| While turbidly flow'd the river; | |
| And hack'd and hew'd as a great god can | 15 |
| With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, | |
| Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed | |
| To prove it fresh from the river. | |
| He cut it short, did the great god Pan | |
| (How tall it stood in the river!), | 20 |
| Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, | |
| Steadily from the outside ring, | |
| And notch'd the poor dry empty thing | |
| In holes, as he sat by the river. | |
| 'This is the way,' laugh'd the great god Pan | 25 |
| (Laugh'd while he sat by the river), | |
| 'The only way, since gods began | |
| To make sweet music, they could succeed.' | |
| Then dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, | |
| He blew in power by the river. | 30 |
| Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan! | |
| Piercing sweet by the river! | |
| Blinding sweet, O great god Pan! | |
| The sun on the hill forgot to die, | |
| And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly | 35 |
| Came back to dream on the river. | |
| Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, | |
| To laugh as he sits by the river, | |
| Making a poet out of a man: | |
| The true gods sigh for the cost and pain— | 40 |
| For the reed which grows nevermore again | |
| As a reed with the reeds of the river. |
