Runagate, Runagate (1962). Detailed description

“Runagate, Runagate” is the fourth in the series of poems that end A Ballad of Remembrance focused on some aspect of the black experience of slavery. This is a two-part, multivoiced poem evoking the terror and trouble of those who ran away; part 1 focuses on the escape of anonymous persons while part 2 focuses on the heroics of Harriet Tubman, one of the most famous escapees. As “Middle Passage” does, “Runagate, Runagate” achieves some of its effectiveness through Hayden’s interspersing of actual quotes (this time from newspaper ads for runaways) with the voices of the runaways themselves as well as that of the speaker/observer.

The poem opens with the perspective of the runaway and the observer at the same time. The language of that opening recreates the runaway’s perceptions:

Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness
and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing
and the night cold and the night long and the river
to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoning
and blackness ahead and when shall I reach that somewhere
morning and keep going and never turn back and keep going

The lack of punctuation creates a stream of consciousness perception of the mental state and emotional condition as well as the physical breathlessness of the pursued. While the perspective is that of the frightened runner (“the night cold and the night long and the river to cross”), the language is that of the speaker/poet (“darkness thicketed with shapes of terror”). Hayden effectively combines them to set the scene and establish the emotional pitch of the poem.

Hayden employs a number of poetic devices in this poem. Notably he introduces rhythm and emphasizes meaning through his use of another kind of repetition, as in the following:

Hoot-owl calling in the ghosted air, five times calling in the ghosted air.
Shadow of a face in the scary leaves, shadow of a voice in the talking leaves.

The repeated words add music while creating a kind of haunting echo that seems fitting for this scene, ghostly and unnerving. Yet the details (for example, the hoot-owl calling five times) are culled directly from Hayden’s research into accounts of slave escapes.

He weaves the poem together using narrative fragments, devices like repeating words (“Runagate / Runagate / Runagate”) and using lines from spirituals (“And before I’d be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave”), along with the quotes from the advertising sources. The narrative fragments create immediacy and build dramatic tension. In part 1, for example, the opening scene could be any runaway’s story, but it seems specific, immediately involving us as readers and as runners ourselves. In part 2 we get an eyewitness account of someone traveling with Harriet Tubman, which provides a complex view of her courage and determination, echoed in and underscored by the last words of the poem: “Mean mean mean to be free.”

For Discussion or Writing
1. This is one of Hayden’s poems with several voices and different sources. Identify at least three of these specifically—that is, who is speaking? Or where is this segment quoted? Then discuss why it is used in the poem at a particular place. For example, “And before I’ll be a slave / I’ll be buried in my grave” is a segment from a Negro spiritual that ends “and go home to my Lord and be free.” It is often quoted in stories of escape and resistance. In this poem, it seems to be the voice of those running away from enslavement toward freedom, expressing their desperate desire to be free.

2. Look at parts 1 and 2 of this poem. What is the focus of each? How are they connected?

3. How does the poem capture the personality or character of Harriet Tubman? Are you surprised by the way she is depicted here? Why or why not?