Read "Cane" by Jean Toomer online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Ralph Kabnis, propped in his bed, tries to read. To read himself to sleep. An oil lamp on a chair near his elbow burns unsteadily. The cabin room is spaced fantastically about it. Whitewashed hearth and chimney, black with sooty saw-teeth. Ceiling, patterned by the fringed globe of the lamp. The walls, unpainted, are seasoned a rosin yellow. And cracks between the boards are black. These cracks are the lips the night winds use for whispering. Night winds in Georgia are vagrant poets, whispering. Kabnis, against his will, lets his book slip down, and listens to them. The warm whiteness of his bed, the lamplight, do not protect him from the weird chill of their song:
White-man's land. Niggers, sing. Burn, bear black children Till poor rivers bring Rest, and sweet glory In Camp Ground.