Jimmy's Blues (2 page)

creation yearns to re-create a time

when we were able to recognize a crime.

Alas,

my stricken kinsmen,

the party is over:

there have never been any white people,

anywhere: the trick was accomplished with mirrors –

look: where is your image now?

where your inheritance,

on what rock stands this pride?

Oh,

I counsel you,

leave History alone.

She is exhausted,

sitting, staring into her dressing-room mirror,

and wondering what rabbit, now,

to pull out of what hat,

and seriously considering retirement,

even though she knows her public

dare not let her go.

She must change.

Yes. History must change.

A slow, syncopated

relentless music begins

suggesting her re-entry,

transformed, virginal as she was,

in the Beginning, untouched,

as the Word was spoken,

before the rape which debased her

to be the whore of multitudes, or,

as one might say, before she became the Star,

whose name, above our title,

carries the Show, making History the patsy,

responsible for every flubbed line,

every missed cue, responsible for the life

and death, of all bright illusions

and dark delusions,

Lord, History is weary

of her unspeakable liaison with Time,

for Time and History

have never seen eye to eye:

Time laughs at History

and time and time and time again

Time traps History in a lie.

But we always, somehow, managed

to roar History back onstage

to take another bow,

to justify, to sanctify

the journey until now.

Time warned us to ask for our money back,

and disagreed with History

as concerns colours white and black.

Not only do we come from further back,

but the light of the Sun

marries all colours as one.

Kinsmen,

I have seen you betray your Saviour

(it is
you
who call Him Saviour)

so many times, and

I have spoken to Him about you,

behind your back.

Quite a lot has been going on

behind your back, and,

if your phone has not yet been disconnected,

it will soon begin to ring:

informing you, for example, that a whole generation,

in Africa, is about to die,

and a new generation is about to rise,

and will not need your bribes,

or your persuasions, any more:

nor your morality. Nor the plundered gold –

Ah! Kinsmen, if I could make you see

the crime is not what you have done to me!

It is you who are blind,

you, bowed down with chains,

you, whose children mock you, and seek another

master,

you, who cannot look man or woman or child in the

eye,

whose sleep is blank with terror,

for whom love died long ago,

somewhere between the airport and the safe-deposit

box,

the buying and selling of rising or falling stocks,

you, who miss Zanzibar and Madagascar and Kilimanjaro

and lions and tigers and elephants and zebras

and flying fish and crocodiles and alligators and

leopards

and crashing waterfalls and endless rivers,

flowers fresher than Eden, silence sweeter than the

grace of God,

passion at every turning, throbbing in the bush,

thicker, oh, than honey in the hive,

dripping

dripping

opening, welcoming, aching from toe to bottom

to spine,

sweet heaven on the line

to last forever, yes,

but, now,

rejoicing ends, man, a price remains to pay,

your innocence costs too much

and we can’t carry you on our books

or our backs, any longer: baby,

find another Eden, another apple tree,

somewhere, if you can,

and find some other natives, somewhere else,

to listen to you bellow

till you come, just like a man,

but we don’t need you,

are sick of being a fantasy to feed you,

and of being the principal accomplice to your

crime:

for, it is
your
crime, now, the cross to which you

cling,

your Alpha and Omega for everything.

Well (others have told you)

your clown’s grown weary, the puppet master

is bored speechless with this monotonous disaster,

and is long gone, does not belong to you,

any more than my woman, or my child,

ever belonged to you.

During this long travail

our ancestors spoke to us, and we listened,

and we tried to make you hear life in our song

but now it matters not at all to me

whether you know what I am talking about – or not:

I know why we are not blinded

by your brightness, are able to see you,

who cannot see us. I know

why we are still here.

Godspeed.

The niggers are calculating,

from day to day, life everlasting,

and wish you well:

but decline to imitate the Son of the Morning,

and rule in Hell.

I believe, my brother,

that some are haunted by a song,

all day, and all the midnight long:

I’m going to tell

God

how you treated

Me:

one of these days.

Now, if that song tormented me,

I could have no choice but be

winter than a bleaching bone

of all the ways there are,

this must be the most dreadful

way to be alone.

White rejects light

while blackness drinks it in

becoming many colours

and stone holds heat

while grass smothers

and flowers die

and the sleeping snake

is hacked to pieces

while digesting his

(so to speak)

three-martini lunch.

Dread stalks our streets,

and our faces.

Many races

gather, again,

to despise and disperse

and destroy us:

nor can they any longer pretend

to be looking for a friend.

That dream was sold

when we were,

on the auction-block

of Manifest Destiny.

Time is not money.

Time

is

time.

And the time has come, again,

to outwit and outlast

survive and surmount

the authors of the blasphemy

of our chains.

At least, we know a

man, when we see one,

a shackle, when we wear one,

or a chain, when we bear one,

a noose from a halter,

or a pit from an altar.

We, who have been blinded,

are not blind

and sense when not to

trust the mind.

Time is not money.

Time is time.

You made the money.

We made the rhyme.

Our children are.

Our children are.

Our children are:

which means that we must be

the pillar of cloud by day

and of fire by night:

the guiding star.

My beloved brother,

I know your walk

and love to hear you

talk that talk

while your furrowed brow

grows young with wonder,

like a small boy, staring at the thunder.

I see you, somehow,

about the age of ten,

determined to enter the world of men,

yet, not too far from your mother’s lap,

wearing your stunning

baseball cap.

Perhaps, then, around eleven,

wondering what to take as given,

and, not much later, going through

the agony bequeathed to you.

Then, spun around, then going under,

the small boy staring at the thunder.

Then, take it all

and use it well

this manhood, calculating

through this hell.

Who says better? Who knows more

than those who enter at that door

called back

for Black,

by Christians, who

raped your mother

and, then, lynched you,

seed from their loins,

flesh of their flesh,

bone of their bone:

what an interesting way

to be alone!

Time is not money:

time is time.

And a man is a man, my brother,

and a crime remains

a crime.

The time our fathers bought for us

resides in a place no man can reach

except he be prepared

to disintegrate himself into atoms,

into smashed fragments of bleaching bone,

which is, indeed, the great temptation

beckoning this disastrous nation.

It may, indeed, precisely, be

all that they claim as History.

Those who required, of us, a song,

know that their hour is not long.

Our children are

the morning star.

In a strange house,

a strange bed

in a strange town,

a very strange me

is waiting for you.

Now

it is very early in the morning.

The silence is loud.

The baby is walking about

with his foaming bottle,

making strange sounds

and deciding, after all,

to be my friend.

You

arrive tonight.

How dull time is!

How empty – and yet,

since I am sitting here,

lying here,

walking up and down here,

waiting,

I see

that time’s cruel ability

to make one wait

is time’s reality.

I see your hair

which I call red.

I lie here in this bed.

Someone teased me once,

a friend of ours –

saying that I saw your hair red

because I was not thinking

of the hair on your head.

Someone also told me,

a long time ago:

my father said to me,

It is a terrible thing,

son,

to fall into the hands of the living God.

Now,

I know what he was saying.

I could not have seen red

before finding myself

in this strange, this waiting bed.

Nor had my naked eye suggested

that colour was created

by the light falling, now,

on me,

in this strange bed,

waiting

where no one has ever rested!

The streets, I observe,

are wintry.

It feels like snow.

Starlings circle in the sky,

conspiring,

together, and alone,

unspeakable journeys

into and out of the light.

I know

I will see you tonight.

And snow

may fall

enough to freeze our tongues

and scald our eyes.

We may never be found again!

Just as the birds above our heads

circling

are singing,

knowing

that, in what lies before them,

the always unknown passage,

wind, water, air,

the failing light

the falling night

the blinding sun

they must get the journey done.

Listen.

They have wings and voices

are making choices

are using what they have.

They are aware

that, on long journeys,

each bears the other,

whirring,

stirring

love occurring

in the middle of the terrifying air.

If the hope of giving

is to love the living,

the giver risks madness

in the act of giving.

Some such lesson I seemed to see

in the faces that surrounded me.

Needy and blind, unhopeful, unlifted,

what gift would give them the gift to be gifted?

The giver is no less adrift

than those who are clamouring for the gift.

If they cannot claim it, if it is not there,

if their empty fingers beat the empty air

and the giver goes down on his knees in prayer

knows that all of his giving has been for naught

and that nothing was ever what he thought

and turns in his guilty bed to stare

at the starving multitudes standing there

and rises from bed to curse at heaven,

he must yet understand that to whom much is given

much will be taken, and justly so:

I cannot tell how much I owe.

(for David)

Two black boots,

on the floor,

figuring out what the walking’s for.

Two black boots,

now, together,

learning the price of the stormy weather.

To say nothing of the wear and tear

on

the mother-fucking

leather.

The darkest hour

is just before the dawn,

and that, I see,

which does not guarantee

power to draw the next breath,

nor abolish the suspicion

that the brightest hour

we will ever see

occurs just before we cease

to be.