Exit Music
Double Elegy
 |
| * |
Whatever city or country
road
you two are on
there are nettles,
and the dark invisible
elements cling to your skin
though you do not cry
and you do not scratch
your arms at forty-five degree
angles
as the landing point of a swan
in the Ohio, the Detroit
River;
at the Paradise Theatre
you named the cellist
with the fanatical fingers
of the plumber, the exorcist,
and though the gimmicky at
wrist
and kneecaps could lift the
seance
table, your voice was real
in the gait and laughter of
Uncle
Henry, who could dance on
either
leg, wooden or real, to the
sound
of the troop train,
megaphone,
catching the fine pitch of a
singer
on the athletic fields of
Virginia.
At the Radisson Hotel,
we once took a fine angel
of the law to the convention
center,
and put her down as an egret
in the subzero platform of a
friend—
this is Minneapolis, the
movies
are all of strangers, holding
themselves
in the delicacy of treading
water,
while they wait for the
trumpet
of the 20th Century Limited
over the bluff or cranny.
You two men like to confront.
the craters of history and
spillage,
our natural infections of
you
innoculating blankets and
fur,
ethos of cadaver and
sunflower.
I hold the dogwood blossom,
eat the pear, and watch the
nettle
swim up in the pools
of the completed song
of Leadbelly and Little
Crow
crooning the buffalo and
horse
to the changes and the
bridge
of a twelve-string guitar,
the melody of “Irene”;
this is really goodbye—
I can see the precious stones
of embolism and consumption
on the platinum wires of the
mouth:
in the flowing rivers, in the
public baths
of Ohio and
Michigan.
 |
| -from Healing Songs for the Inner Ear |
Comments
Post a Comment