398

398

SONNY STITT : Cherokee

As a dark tangle of branch and root

Rides an eddy, turning slowly,

A dark branch of the eddy

Rides the current, rolling off ;

A white frond of froth

Billows where the current turns ;

A white tangle of cloud

Inclines over the green ridge ;

A blush of vermillion touches the vale,

Moving over the grey fir trees ;

A blush of stars peers

At the straggling of the treeline ;

A roar of voices is in the falling water,

Where the rock opens its arms ;

A roar of burning is in the wide heaven,

As the gate open and all shine.

Branch and eddy and current and cloud,

Ridge and fir and star and falls,

Earth and heaven and their voices,

Move in counterpoint :

A gold thrush gathers all into its curt structure,

To throw upon the air in patterns.

397

MILES DAVIS : Footprints

Another fork came down from the high bank

And we were sure that a fire had started

Under the cliff. Mallow cloud drove in gusts

Over the ridge under the cliff where a fire

Had started, a yellow shroud wove in bursts

Out of the break of dry oaklimb, wafted

Its spinning expulse in frame of an image.

I was waiting for my father to come

And the sparks brote, forming his image.

Sparks, composite : cheekspark,

Eyebright, nostrilflare, earwhorl, burnt

Tongueslick, flimmering beardglut.

Spark spark spark blowing down

Out of darkness, blowing up in shaked lights.

Mallow robe I allow to fall

Holding my shoulders as a fighter his.

As the night expends itself, we carry the body

Up out of its shawl.

I hear his voice in the intermediate darkness,

Where I am a child and know no name

Than what he in rough utterances perform :

Stay when he bid stay, come when he bid come.

The pale of the earth is flooding up again.

I brush ashen soil from the cloth of my knees.

396

396

JOHN COLTRANE : Mr. Day

My papers blew-w-w

f-f-from the balcony of the Regent.

I had been making a cocktail with rum

And ginger ale when one of the bellhops

Opened the door,

And a gust caught them up from

The table in front of the balcony

And they played white on the warm wind.

I ran after, spilling my mixture in gobs

Over the parquet before the railing.

The boy mouthed oh-oh-oh.

I made and he and I drinked. Blassom

Was in a bole near the sink and a shalky-white

Face of Paris pflaster had flowers in

On the console where they left the keys

In a wallet of vanilla-coloured paper.

I trode the balcony and leaned my arm

Out into the air.

There were planes crossing in far blue

And the shapes of churches like long bodies.

The morning came up in one opalescent swell.

I was feeling good with the drink,

And then the door closed behind my guest,

And then it was five o'glück in the afternoon.

I never got back any of the papers

So that my sour letters weren't sent

And the last of them there solder

To my body in sleep its jumbled word,

Meaning the bulb was gone,

And I had to get up on a ladder

From where I could see slow cars peeling

Onto the highway, flowing into the distance.

395

395

A savage flower bloomed that summer in D.C. :

A Russian spirit had followed the negros back over the sea,

(Wilson remarked upon their surreptitious movements),

The leaves fell over the boulevards, yellowed, drawn somehow

Out of their own substance, become shallow ;

The stars hung delicately in their ever-shifting alignments ;

Bodies hung in the dusk from the municipal lighting.

In place of a prophet, a nagging voice. “By the God of Heaven,

We are cowards and jackasses.” They fell out of the cradle

Into a grave, light blown down the wind. Huddle

In their clothes, listening to the roar of the big guns. Fighting

For breath, watching the water stream over the plain,

Watching the clouds dwindle and the sky brighten,

And the birds wheel out ahead and turn and fall inward again.

That grief they carried back to the capital, and Wilson

Saw that they had also carried back sedition and meant to sow.

Others move in association and carry up bodies in chains

Of hemp, and garland them in their own entrails,

And pull the bones out of their habitual places, and throw

Down into the fire whatever else, and leave, calmly,

Knowing one made nothing. Of what else, nothing made one.

Through all this commotion, our bright-eyed boy hurried home

To his genteel mother, hoping only not to fall sudden prey.

He would up sticks in some months and move away,

Taking with him the best sidemen of his Washington days.

Unto the breach, dear friends, unto a place of glass and chrome,

Unto a word that he had heard intoned, and in that intonation

The voice rise, satisfied in its own chorale. A dutch word : Harlem.

The blood falling from the slashed stump of a dirty coon's member

On a corner near U-street was a simple horror,

From which he simply fled, dragging his brothers along beside him.