The Ballad of Cathay Williams William Cathay
A white man wouldn't less
He stripped me naked was
Whipping me know
I was a woman got
A name just turn
It inside out
And I'm a man
How else I'm gonna know myself
When I am called
A white man wouldn't twice I had
Smallpox twice after I enlisted
twice and had / To be
hospitalized both times
Ain't never once
no doctor nor no nurse
Discovered me
No for no white woman
I wouldn't have
nothing for her to see
She would want me to know she seen
And I was watching close
How else I'm gone to know myself
When I am called
And what she see is anyway
how is she gonna know for sure
Black man ain't got
a hole down there
How is she know he ain't
A white man born wrong inside out
and twice as big and mean
And got a hole go twice as deep to hell
How is that woman sure
of anything at all
How else I'm etc
Copyright © 2012 by Shane McCrae. Used with permission of the author.