~ a poem by Albert Pendergraft (1894 – 1944)
(revised and edited by Lloyd Albert Williams)
You’re a lonesome land, an empty land
A hard land that is rugged and bare
You’re a wild and untamed lonesome land
A proud land that’s demanding but fair
When I pause on some sun-blistered hill
And gaze far o’er your broad boundless range
Where the brisk restless winds never still
And swift sunlight and cloud shadows change
There’s a song in my heart and an ache
A longing, indefinitely sad
There’s contentment that sorrow can’t take
And my troubles seem gone, and I’m glad
In the night when the hours slowly pass
And a wolf wails her long lonely cry
Where the wind whispers low in the grass
And the stars circle silently by
Your magical spirit holds me fast
In a spell that cannot be undone
While the days of my lifetime shall last
You have blessed me and made me your son
Then softly to me comes your low voice
When I’m so weary and far away
Faintly I hear you, and so rejoice
For you are calling me home to stay
More often now I hear your calm call
While I so long and wearily roam
And my eyes fill with tears that would fall
Were it not that you’re calling me home
Your voice promises comfort and peace
When I rest on your nurturing breast
Then all my cares and sorrows shall cease
And my somnolent soul shall find rest
Give me strength till my battles are won
While along life’s lonely trails I plod
Then at last when my journey is done
Let me rest for all time ‘neath your sod
Let my spirit roam free in your hills
And keep watch as the ages pass by
Till the clamor of humankind stills
When mere men and their follies shall die
Till the heavens and earth have grown old
And the endless dark night has drawn on
When the sun in your path has grown cold
And the days of creation are gone
by Albert Pendergraft, 1944
& Lloyd Albert Williams, 2018
(Original poem retained for posterity)
About this poem: Albert Pendergraft was one of my many uncles, and I was given his given name as my middle name, but I remember meeting him only once, when I was just two or three years old on the main street of Worland, Wyoming. Albert committed suicide not long after that, in 1944, leaving a poem he called “Lonesome Land” behind as a kind of self-penned epitaph, I suppose, although it was written in more of a ballad kind of poetry, repeating the title “Lonesome Land” every other line, which made it a much simpler poem than this revision, although the meaning of the original poem and several of the lines have not been changed, but all of the stanzas have been altered for length, meter and the rhyming scheme. ~llaw
The attached opinion article offers well-considered food for thought on the question of nuclear deterrence or nuclear disarmament, something that I will explore in depth on this website as time goes by.
