The Lonesome Land
My uncle, Albert Pendergraft, committed suicide in 1944, apparently from a longtime overdose of alcohol and depression. He blew his head off with an S&W .38 Special revolver. Born just three years before his death, I have no recall of the event, but Albert, no doubt unintentionally, left a life-long gift for me – or for anyone else who cared to partake of it for what it was. So far as I know I am the only one who did, though my older brother may have.
The gift was what I believe was his suicide note – a poem of love for the land he roamed that depicted a key part of the philosophy of his lonesome life. For several years late in his life he was a ditch rider. For sure, he was a recluse: he had great love for Gaia, but little love for his fellow man or their gods.
Albert was born on a remote ranch in Johnson County, Wyoming, in 1894, just four years after Wyoming became a part of the United States. The son of a Texas Trail cowboy, he spoke so seldom that he became known as Silent Al, though I believe his thoughts ran deeper than most men could have understood, which probably contributed to his quiet disposition as well as to his death.
He loved the land he knew – Wyoming's rugged ranges and basins – and his poem explicitly expresses that deep love. But it also expresses something much more profound: the futility of men's efforts (or "follies" in his words) as they clamor along together. He surely understood the futility of clamor, had little use for it, and his silence perhaps succeeded in some small way toward not adding to the chaos of it. Or maybe his silence was simply his protest.
All my life I have somehow kept his poem in my mind and close to my heart, and I've spent countless hours caught up in its quiet, almost silent, expression of the comfort and solace of solitude. Over the years, especially during my time in prison, I've edited and carefully revised Albert's poem, taking great care to ensure that its gentle, quiet, beauty and the integrity of its poetic cadence and phrases remain true to his writing and his meaning. Albert may have meant for the poem to be a song, for in the original work he used the words Lonesome Land as secondary rhyme, perhaps for alliteration or a musical beat, at the end of every couplet – or 24 times in the 12 verses of the original poem.
The poem has never been published before except in a July 1, 2000, preview issue of the reborn Territorial Enterprise (Nevada's oldest newspaper of Mark Twain fame) that I had purchased (leased) the rights and trademark to in a short-lived effort to bring the famous publication back as a semi-monthly news and review magazine. Ironically, it was this effort that contributed to the misappropriation of a third of a million dollars that ultimately sent me to prison. Some of the verses are used in my historical novel manuscript The Sweetwater Conspiracy: the Legend of Cattle Kate.
Albert's poem will always ring true to me and comfort me when I am cold and lonely, for it echoes my love for Gaia as well as my concerns that men's abysmal follies are not in the best interests of the earth, mankind, or the cosmos and creation:
Lonesome Land
a poem by Albert Pendergraft (1894 – 1944)
(edited by Albert Lloyd Williams)
You’re a lonesome land, an empty land;
You're a land that is rugged and bare;
You're a hard and untamed lonesome land --
A wild 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,
And a longing, indefinite, sad;
There’s contentment that sorrow can’t take,
And my troubles seem gone, and I’m glad.
In the night while the hours slowly pass,
And a wolf sounds her long mournful cry,
When the wind whispers low in the grass,
And the stars circle silently by,
Then the spirit of you 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 I rejoice,
For you are calling me home to stay.
Again and again I hear your 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 human-kind stills
And 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
The gift was what I believe was his suicide note – a poem of love for the land he roamed that depicted a key part of the philosophy of his lonesome life. For several years late in his life he was a ditch rider. For sure, he was a recluse: he had great love for Gaia, but little love for his fellow man or their gods.
Albert was born on a remote ranch in Johnson County, Wyoming, in 1894, just four years after Wyoming became a part of the United States. The son of a Texas Trail cowboy, he spoke so seldom that he became known as Silent Al, though I believe his thoughts ran deeper than most men could have understood, which probably contributed to his quiet disposition as well as to his death.
He loved the land he knew – Wyoming's rugged ranges and basins – and his poem explicitly expresses that deep love. But it also expresses something much more profound: the futility of men's efforts (or "follies" in his words) as they clamor along together. He surely understood the futility of clamor, had little use for it, and his silence perhaps succeeded in some small way toward not adding to the chaos of it. Or maybe his silence was simply his protest.
All my life I have somehow kept his poem in my mind and close to my heart, and I've spent countless hours caught up in its quiet, almost silent, expression of the comfort and solace of solitude. Over the years, especially during my time in prison, I've edited and carefully revised Albert's poem, taking great care to ensure that its gentle, quiet, beauty and the integrity of its poetic cadence and phrases remain true to his writing and his meaning. Albert may have meant for the poem to be a song, for in the original work he used the words Lonesome Land as secondary rhyme, perhaps for alliteration or a musical beat, at the end of every couplet – or 24 times in the 12 verses of the original poem.
The poem has never been published before except in a July 1, 2000, preview issue of the reborn Territorial Enterprise (Nevada's oldest newspaper of Mark Twain fame) that I had purchased (leased) the rights and trademark to in a short-lived effort to bring the famous publication back as a semi-monthly news and review magazine. Ironically, it was this effort that contributed to the misappropriation of a third of a million dollars that ultimately sent me to prison. Some of the verses are used in my historical novel manuscript The Sweetwater Conspiracy: the Legend of Cattle Kate.
Albert's poem will always ring true to me and comfort me when I am cold and lonely, for it echoes my love for Gaia as well as my concerns that men's abysmal follies are not in the best interests of the earth, mankind, or the cosmos and creation:
Lonesome Land
a poem by Albert Pendergraft (1894 – 1944)
(edited by Albert Lloyd Williams)
You’re a lonesome land, an empty land;
You're a land that is rugged and bare;
You're a hard and untamed lonesome land --
A wild 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,
And a longing, indefinite, sad;
There’s contentment that sorrow can’t take,
And my troubles seem gone, and I’m glad.
In the night while the hours slowly pass,
And a wolf sounds her long mournful cry,
When the wind whispers low in the grass,
And the stars circle silently by,
Then the spirit of you 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 I rejoice,
For you are calling me home to stay.
Again and again I hear your 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 human-kind stills
And 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
vvv
Copyright (©2008) Albert Lloyd Williams
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