389

389

DUKE ELLINGTON : Warm Valley

You held us in your venerable hand :

Mein Herz zog, mein lieber Herzog.

You left a glass of water in the door,

And when they opened it would spill,

And the droplets of the water would

From articulations of your hand fall,

And your generations from the grand

Pour and pour and pour and pour.

The boat turned south

Where the rivers met,

And mosses hung like straggled cloud

From the liveoak and cypress trees.

I drank rum in the morning and went

Into the water to retrieve a suitcase

Sodden with rivergreen, full of slacks,

Shirts and socks and books in Greek.

I ran my finger along the buckling

Lines, paragraph to paragraph, over

The damp wrinkles and bleared type,

Fires that lay

Still burning under the mountains,

Under the altars of fine alabaster.

In the afternoon the wind shook leaves

Down over my sleep. A plane went over

Trailing blue and yellow smoke.

I woke and found my glass in the door.