The Migrant Song or See How the Land Yields Up Her Treasure (Peter Krug) Up from El Centro and San Bernadino Bakersfield, Fresno, Meder, Merced Salinas and Stockton, up to Sacramento Santa Rosa and Red Bluff and on back again A hundred thousand men, women, and children They flow on the highways, the old and the young In an unending cycle of sowing and reaping The long valley's labor can never be done And see how the land yields up her treasures To man's patient hand Up in the morning an hour before dawning They're stretching and yawning, rubbing sleep from their eyes With the last stars still quivering in the morning breeze shivering The sun is just lightening the easternmost skies Soon in the big open trucks they will travel Crammed in together, crowded like cattle Over pavement, over gravel, over dirt roll the wheels Out to the orchards, the vineyards, the fields Soon in the long rows the swift hands are toiling In the day's growing heat, in the dusty rows boiling The sun presses down like a hot heavy hand At the backs of the laborers working the land In the shade of the oak trees by the side of the field rows Dirty and shoeless the young children play While fathers and mothers, older sisters and brothers Toil on their knees in the heat of the day Down from the highway come men in brown uniforms Questioning, checking and searching and soon One or two whose papers are not in order Are gone from the crew in the hot afternoon When the sun has descended and the long day is ended It's back to the trucks wiping sweat from their eyes Tired and weary and covered all over With fruit juice and brown dust, with sweat and black flies When there's crops in the field rows and grapes in the vineyards When the limbs in the orchards bow down to the ground There's food on the table, there's clothes for the children There's singing and dancing and joy all around But with skies grey as iron and icy winds whistling And frost in the field and no work to be found Through cold nights they huddle and hunger and struggle Till spring brings back sweetness and life to the ground Copyright Peter Krug see also Deportees and Pastures of Plenty SOF
Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!