423

423

DUKE ELLINGTON : Rude Interlude

It has been adequately written that life

Is an interlude of distorted noise

Between two crackling fields of silence,

And to state so is uncontroversial—

With a volley of broken chords we fall

Out of utero. There is a pause for breath,

And then a long, slow swell. Wah-waaah.

The measure of our life crunches forward.

At each second count, a knuckle of ivory,

And our bodies stagger into their shapes.

Somewhere around the age of twelve,

We develop a peculiar sass. The trumpet

Adopts a harmon tone and swallows its

Purity; so, we squelch on into adulthood.

At the turn of the third decade, we find

A sonorous voice blowing from our lips.

De-de-da-dadee, de-de-da-dadee.

We startle, then recognise it as our own.

A sudden wind, and summer palms off

Its colours in a bluster of clarinets.

Curtains of brass are drawing down,

Curtains of brass and pearl draw down :

A bucketful of green pondwater, the voice

Of our maturity sloshes from its vessel.

The horns swell vigorously, and it is as if

A bridge of light bolstered in our view.

The recording ends abruptly with a tamp

On the hi-hat. We are convinced, however,

That we hear a reiteration, in the restless

Silence, of the first three broken chords.