Sometimes, when I chance to sail on the Mississippi river my mind went over hundred years back and I swear I could hear coming from the distance the gentle choir from the cotton fields and my heart ached...

Cotton fields on a burning summer day,
they have been blossoming under the sun,
picked dry, some with a drop of sweat,
like collecting small pieces of clouds.

They can hear no so far away the river
that tireless keeps on rolling along,
while Bessie keeps on bending over
following the powerful back of George.

Jeremiahs is not working today because
arthritis grew so much that he could not
be in the field with the others, old man,
after fifty years couldn’t work no more.

One day from the cotton field was heard
all the pickers singing to the Good Lord,
because the old man had went to the river,
his house went on empty, he didn’t return.